UUMA 2015 Annual Review UUMA Annual Review Year of 2015 From the UUMA Board of Trustees

The UUMA Board has had an exciting and creative year. Some might wonder what the Board actually does to benefit our Contents members, since we have delegated the programmatic work of fulfilling the mission of “nurturing excellence in ministry through Board of Trustees Report ..... 2 collegiality, continuing education and collaboration” to our Staff Report ...... 4 awesome Executive Director and staff and many great program teams of volunteers. We have left to ourselves this work: 50-Year Sermon ...... 6  To set the vision for the UUMA. 25-Year Sermon ...... 10  To monitor the UUMA’s progress towards achieving its Berry Street Essay ...... 13 vision. Obituaries ...... 25  To stay in touch with and listen to our members. UUMA CENTER News ...... 46  To keep learning more about being a great Board.

 To be collaborative leaders and trustworthy stewards of Endowment Honorees ...... 50 our resources (people, money, history).

 To keep ourselves accountable to do our work well. Reviewing the year 2015, there’s a lot of ground we covered. Among the many things we accomplished, a few highlights season to season included: Winter: Participating at the Institute in Asilomar

 Collegial conversation around our “Big Question” about what we need to be thinking of as we frame new Visions.

 Connecting with Stewardship “Ambassadors.” March: Attending 50th anniversary events in Selma and Birmingham.

 Learning from Beth Zemsky, helping us see more clearly how to do all our work incorporating learnings of inter-cultural competency.

 Accomplished a major self-evaluation of how we the Board are functioning. Spring: Led (listened and recorded) 19 conversations with Chapters, around our “Big Question.” June: Ministry Days.

 Guidelines Committee introduced questions for our chapters to consider about best practices in using social media observing professional guidelines.

 Year two of the intentional effort to make our Ministry Days more family-friendly and the first year to include the child dedication of PKs in the opening worship.

 Vespers in collaboration with LREDA.

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 Celebration of first year launch of stewardship campaign for UUMA Endowment.

 Said Goodbye to Duane Fickeisen, welcomed new secretary Kelly Weisman Asprooth- Jackson, and our President-designate, Cheryl M. Walker. Fall: Continuing ed on governance, what “generative thinking” really means.

 Explored our learnings from the spring conversations with chapters, initiating deep generative conversations about the work to re-craft our vision statements.

 CARM (the Board’s Committee on Anti-Racism and Multiculturalism) hosted a convocation for the essays and responses on a new book being published – reflections by ministers of color about their experiences in leadership. Looking ahead to 2016: Your Board will be...

 Working on new visions statement to help guide our Executive Director in developing an updated strategic plan (informed by what we heard from our colleagues in the Listening Campaign).

 Creating a truly memorable and rewarding Ministry Days June 2016 in Columbus, Ohio. Stay tuned for details to come! The members of your Board of Trustees are deeply grateful to each of you for your ministry, and for giving us this opportunity to serve such wonderful folks committed to such a great mission.

Linda Olson-Peebles Jennifer Ryu Olivia Holmes Kelly W. Asprooth-Jackson President Vice President Treasurer Secretary

Fritz Hudson Patricia Hart Josh Pawelek Don Southworth Good Offices Member At-Large ARAOM Executive Director

Page 3 UUMA Annual Review Year of 2015 From the UUMA Staff

I am in awe and appreciation for those who have the commitment and creativity to send out an annual holiday letter with updated pictures of the family and a review of the year. It’s been years, (decades?), since our family has sent out Christmas cards, let alone an annual newsletter. Maybe that’s why I dread our annual UUMA newsletter looking back at the year that was and looking forward to the year ahead. But then I read last year’s and start writing this year’s and my dread turns into gratitude for the honor it is to lead this organization and highlight what’s happened and what we hope will happen next. All thanks for this practice go to Janette, who not only knows how important it is for our members to have a written record of the 25/50 sermons and Berry Street Essay but also is thinking of those who will come long after I’m gone and who might want to know what we did in the olden days of 2015. Below are some of our highlights of 2015 and some of our dreams for 2016. For those who read these words many years from now, we hope we have left you a UUMA that is a vital resource and partner in your ministry. For those who read them in 2016, thank you for the commitment you bring to your ministry, your life and the UUMA. We on the staff feel privileged for the chance to serve you. In 2015 the UUMA continued to grow stronger and expand our offerings and our reach.

 We doubled the size of our staff in 2015 adding our first intern, Emily DeTar and our first Endowment Director, Sarah Moldenhauer-Salazar. We said goodbye to Allison Palm and said hello to Andrew Mertz, our Program Assistant, and we added the Acting Office Assistant role to Lucas Southworth’s responsibilities.

 We had the largest and most successful Institute for Excellence in Ministry at Asilomar in early February and live-streamed one of the sessions for the first time. Our CENTER team has begun plans for expanding the next Institute, in 2018, to clergy beyond the UUMA.

 The Sustaining the Call campaign, due to Sarah’s leadership, grew from $100,000 in pledges at the beginning of the year to over $650,000 at the end of the year. Almost 30% of our membership has participated.

 We began our second Beyond the Call program on entrepreneurial ministry in partnership with the UUA, and invited rabbis and clergy from the United Church of Christ to join us. The two-year program is a partnership with business schools from around the country and has been a catalyst for other spiritual/religious innovation programs and partnerships.

 UUMA Connect, our online resource for skill building and connecting between members, continued to grow by adding ministry meditations, wiki content pages, a “zoom” room for video conferences, and a tagging system to make it easier to find information.

 We successfully changed our membership year to match our fiscal year and voted to have off-site voting for members at our annual meeting.

 We completed a successful financial review and continued to strengthen our financial health.

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 Over 40 people participated in our coaching program which offers one-on-one peer coaching to members who desire it. We continued to offer mentor training to improve our skills in mentoring those newer to ministry. Looking ahead to 2016 we are planning to keep growing and evolving:

 Begin our third UUMA-wide conversation on Where Leads Our Call?

 Expand the reach of our Sustaining the Call endowment campaign by reaching out to the larger Unitarian Universalist world including congregations and key leaders.

 We are partnering with other professional organizations (LREDA, UUMN, AUA) and the UUA in creating new training resources to nurture shared excellence in ministry.

 Publish, in partnership with Skinner, a book on the experiences of some of our ministers of color in serving predominantly white institutions

 The new Collegial Development Team (CDT) will begin implementing their strategic plan on how we can strengthen our collegial connections, especially for those who are challenged to take part in our chapter structure.

 We will be designing and coordinating a process, in partnership with the UUA, for offering collegial connection, discernment support, and training for those training for our ministry from aspirant to preliminary fellowship status. The UUMA is larger and stronger than it ever has been as we enter 2016. We on staff will continue to do what we can to nurture the health of the UUMA so the UUMA can do all it can to nurture its members and excellence in ministry.

Don Southworth Janette Lallier Andrew Mertz Sarah Moldenhauer- Emily DeTar Salazar

Page 5 UUMA Annual Review Year of 2015 50-Year Sermon Musings of a Dinosaur Rev. Dave Weissbard

When I received the invitation to vote for a representative of those Ordained in 1965, I perused the list of survivors and put it away. When Janette called to say she had not received my vote, I told her, considering the distinction with which each of the ministers on the list had served our churches and Association over the last five decades in so many different ways, I was unwilling to make a choice among them, and declined to vote. I was shocked to learn subsequently that I had been chosen. It has occurred to me that perhaps all my colleagues made the same choice as I did and someone in Boston rolled the dice. However achieved, it is indeed an honor to be in this role. I hasten to add that I do not speak for my colleagues, merely as one of them. They cannot be held responsible for what I shall say. James Madison Barr was minister of the Albany church during my formative years. Jim was conservative in many ways and we often disagreed with his sermons, but we loved and respected Jim – in his preaching he got us to examine many of our assumptions. I decided then that the role of sermons is more to stimulate thinking on the part of the listeners and less to elicit agreement. I have faithfully followed that path up to and including today. I do not expect most of you to agree with my musings this morning, but I hope you will consider them. I begin with an epigraph from the Roman historian Seneca, who said of a certain general: “He remained the same as before, but the same was no longer befitting.” The UUA to which I and my cohort committed our careers was not the same then as it is today.

 Back then, well more than half of the 25 of us ordained in 1965 had attended a UU related seminary.

 Back then, one statistic suggests there were only four women in ministerial fellowship - I doubt that number, perhaps it was 14 - it wasn’t 40!

 Back then, there were no openly LGBT ministers allowed in fellowship.

 Back then, it was virtually unheard of for UU ministers to refer to themselves as “Rev. Dave,” or “Rev. George” – or to be spoken of by congregations in that way. I used Rev. only when dealing with hospitals or the police.

 Back then, we all thought “man” was generic.

 Back then, actually two years after our Ordinations, the UUA’s Committee on Goals reported:

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Unitarian Universalists no longer regard their faith as distinctively Christian, and an overwhelming majority hope the denomination will move toward a universal or distinctively humanistic religion in contrast to liberal Protestantism or ecumenical Christianity. [The Association reportedly urged the committee not to disclose regional differences in their findings because it was very clear that while New Englanders clung to theistic language, outside of New England, the Humanist-Theist debate of the 30's and 40's had been resolved in favor of the Humanists. The administration did not want to offend the New England UU’s.]

 Back in those days, I had a lot of compassion for the ministers of the old generation who had seen their denomination move away from its Christian and theistic roots. They were no longer mainstream through no failing of their own. They had not changed, they had “remained the same as before, but the same was no longer befitting.” They had become dinosaurs - relics of the past. In my pulpit and at meetings, I insisted if the UUA truly had no creed, theists had every right to continue to assert their legitimate place in our movement. If they could be pushed aside because of their theology, what might happen to us down the road? There had to be room for diversity! Hymns for the Celebration of Life, [the blue hymnal] which came out in 1964, the year before our Ordinations, included 23 readings and 13 hymns by the humanistic Ken Patton. Now there are five hymns and three readings by him. In receiving the UUA‘s Distinguished Service Award in 1986, Ken, who had always seen himself as an outsider, perceived a trend to which many of us were blind as he cautioned the UU’s: “Now, as you are cuddling up to the concepts and metaphors of traditional religion, you need young and feisty mavericks more than ever, and they may be hard to find in this yuppy generation.” [He went on to say] “This is not as liberal a movement as the one I entered. The evidence that drew many of us to humanism has grown exponentially since, and yet religious humanism has waned.” In fact, in 1980 Carl Scovel had delivered a GA Living Tradition sermon on "The Journey Home" Carl declared: “I would like religious liberals to think it was all right to come home. I would like religious liberals to think they could pray, could read scripture, could say the psalms, could hear again the stories of our heritage. . .” [What Carl apparently did not understand was that, unlike him, for some of us, Humanism was home - that was where we were raised.] In 1998, the Episcopal religious scholar, Robert Bellah was invited to address the General Assembly. Bellah told us his favorite Unitarian leader was Henry W. Bellows. In 1865, Bellows convinced the National Association of Unitarian Churches that it could be strong only if they forced out the radicals like Emerson and the followers of Theodore Parker. According to Earl Morse Wilbur:

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The language of the preamble to its proposed constitution implied that all its members were disciples of “the Lord Jesus Christ” and devoted “to the service of God and the building up of the Kingdom of his Son.” The radicals backed away and many joined in creating the Free Religious Association. The Unitarian organization was strengthened for a time by excluding divergent ideas. It was 30 years before that breech was healed. I, therefore, always considered Bellows a villain in our history. As Bellah saw it, the answer for us, if we wanted to grow, was to become more like the Episcopal Church -- which has seen a 44% decline in membership since 1965. What was happening in the UUA became crystal clear in a GA “Meet the President” session, when a young woman minister complained to John Buehrens about the Humanists in her congregation who were resistant to her sermons on spirituality. I was stunned when I heard John reply, “Don’t worry, the Humanists are dying off.” [Actually, we weren’t dying, only feeling driven out.] Last year, our retired colleague Tom Schade asserted in his “Lively Tradition” blog: There is a short list of items in our UU consensus, the first of which, the “language of reverence.” is now our vocabulary. President Sinkford was roundly criticized for suggesting that we needed to break out of the straightjacket of humanist language, but then, we did. We’re all about “calls,” “prayer,” “faith,” “mission,” “spirit,” and “soul.” Admittedly, we are probably sloppy in our usage, but everyone kind of gets what each other is talking about and goes along with it. I am not suggesting that Tom’s statement of consensus is wrong. On the contrary, I fear he is correct, but I, and many others, are not a part of that consensus. We certainly define “straightjackets” differently. Some of us have become dinosaurs in our movement. We remained the same as before, more or less, but the UUA has moved back to the traditional religious language many of us do not find relevant, and so our theology is deemed no longer befitting. My friend and classmate, Rolfe Gerhardt, in an insightful paper he prepared for the Harper’s Ferry Group in 1998, compared sermon titles and worship materials in use in UU churches at the time of our Ordinations and then in 1998. He suggested that we had experienced a paradigm shift from being what Carol Pearson called “Seekers” to being “Orphans.” The “Seeker” wishes to find adventure, to cut loose and explore the new, while the Orphan seeks security by clinging to the past and the known. We had been taught that the words Peter Finley Dunne wrote in 1902 about the role of newspapers, applied to the role of liberal ministers: namely “to comfort the afflicted and afflict the comfortable.” It appears that through the lenses of today’s consensus, all are afflicted [that is to say, orphans] and the role of the minister is much more to comfort than to challenge. Today there are 55 million religiously unaffiliated Americans. I strongly doubt the UUA’s assertion

Page 8 UUMA AnnualUUMA Review Annual Review Year of 2015 50-Year Sermon that many thousands of the unaffiliated claim to be UU. I don’t believe many of them have even heard of us. If they have, I believe we no longer represent the alternative they are seeking to traditional religion. Consider the “Sunday Assembly” movement. In the two years since its founding in England in 2013, it has grown to more than 80 congregations in eight countries [48 in the US and Canada] There is a Portland Sunday Assembly. Among the Movement’s principles are: 1. [Sunday Assembly] is a 100% celebration of life. We are born from nothing and go to nothing. Let’s enjoy it together. 2. [Sunday Assembly] has no doctrine. We have no set texts so we can make use of wisdom from all sources. 3. [Sunday Assembly] has no deity. We don’t do supernatural but we also won’t tell you you’re wrong if you do. 4. [Sunday Assembly] Is radically inclusive. Everyone is welcome, regardless of their beliefs – this is a place of love that is open and accepting. 9. [Sunday Assembly] won’t tell you how to live, but will try to help you do it as well as you can. Sunday Assemblies have laid claim to what many of us viewed as our territory. If I were church shopping today, I suspect I would be more likely to be drawn to the Sunday Assembly movement than to what appears now to be the largely liberal-Protestant UUA. I said at the outset, it has not been my intention to persuade you to agree with me. I believe the future of the UUA has been impacted by decisions, mostly informal, to draw a circle which rejects Humanist and Naturalist language and ideas, in favor of traditional religion-speak, and thereby to encourage those seeking something new to look elsewhere. I ask, “Is that really where you want to see the UUA go?” But what do I know? After all, I am only a dinosaur.

Page 9 UUMA Annual Review Year of 2015 25-Year Sermon Intersectional Patterns of Love Rev. Gail Seavey

You're not going to be surprised, it's what we do here, talk about what's changed, what stays the same. One thing that has changed is that twenty-five years ago it was all about identity politics. I am a feminist, it's about women's rights. You (pointing) were all about racial justice, you (pointing) were all about –GL - there was only lesbian's and gay's rights then – and we had offices for all of those at the UUA, and when they dumped the women's rights office, boy were we pissed. (laughter) Well what about us that were bi-sexual and inter-racial - the pain of people speaking up. What about if you were doing work about poverty that crossed all these identities? What if you were beginning to see deep ecology? What department did you fit in? It has been a blessing that intellectually and in our hearts, we have developed this understanding of intersectional identity, of the complexity of those strings that are so very real, those identities with historical, political backgrounds. But those strings are woven together in complexity of the identifiers of what we do in the world and in who we are in our hearts and souls. So I'm going to ask you do this little art teacher thing – (laughter) OK, so we've got this net, this intersectionality (holds up hands with fingers inter woven). Good! I love it, you've all doing it! (laughter) And we should have pictures of intersectionality up on the screen - ignore them if you want. (laughter) I want you to shift your focus from the net, let's say that's the positive space, the strings, your fingers, and shift it to the negative spaces, the spaces in between. Because, as we weave these nets inside and out, this magical thing happens in these spaces in between. The spaces, where something new happens, something that's beyond the silo identities, something more living, growing, changing. Some of you call that, specifically, queer. So if I would be so bold to use the word queer here. (Cheers, laughs) Young people have taught me this. (laughter, applause) So I believe we've done the same thing with theology. When I, when we, started ministry twenty-five years ago, there were Christian congregations, there were humanist congregations, there were Universalist congregations. I mean, they called me, self-identified as a Pagan at a time, to a humanist congregation. Weird, how is that going to work? What we learned was that in the meeting of each other, with these silo-ed theological identities, the spaces in between started to weave us together. People in our congregation started to say, “Oh, well, maybe I'm influenced by that person's spirituality or that Christian ethics, or that humanist grounding. And they became intersectional within their souls as well as in our congregations, becoming truly interfaith. Intra-faith, because it was us, in community together, intersectional. This magic, this same magic, started to happen in the spaces in between and something new is happening. Now, I don't know why I was so surprised by all of this, I really don't, because something has always stayed the same. Conrad Wright, he was some ours' teacher - I loved Conrad, he told the gossip about what happened with Unitarians within pretty much a twenty-five mile radius (laughter) over the backyard fence. He taught us that we are the Free Church based on two simple things: the free

Page 10 UUMA AnnualUUMA Review Annual Review Year of 2015 25-Year Sermon individual, each of you, and the freely gathered community, that's us. Now that was political, political, right, because people want... knew! that they had to break away from hierarchies, from emperors, and kings, Popes and bishops to have an authentic religious life. But that was, at it's ground, theological – profoundly theological. The freedom was for one reason, so we protected the spaces in between. That we walk together, side by side, so we did not get tangled and twisted in each other. It was based on a text – a proof text – in the gospel of John. I know I can say that here, because we are all over this thing about I can't talk about God... (laughter, applause) We are queer, right? We are queer theologically, so it's OK. So – Jesus said to Nicodemus in the night, “The spirit will bloweth where it will. We don't know where it comes from, and we don't know where it's going, but it makes all things new.” It makes all things new. That is why we have the polity that we have. Why do we have this problem then with this word authority? (laughter) UU's – those UU's, those UU's over there, (laughter) have a problem with authority. But you're UU right, so we have a problem with authority, I'm just sayin'. (laughter) In some ways yes, it's in our DNA, our president said that last night , I agree. It's in our DNA, I mean, aren't theological and political DNA tightly tied together in the free church so the spirit can move freely between us, so that we can maketh all things new? But authority is such a simple word, it just means that you're authorized to do something. I'm authorized to do something in my job, dare I say ministry is a job, at the different places I've worked, they've authorized me to do different things. The different institutions you've work in, have different job descriptions or calls. What's the deal? The deal is, we're pretty emotional about all this. I didn't understand this – I thought I understood it over and over again – but I had this kind of 'aha' moment at a Gamaliel - a national organizing week long training, a leadership training about a year and a half ago. It was the most diverse group of people I have ever been with for in for a week in my life, people of every race and age, every denomination or none. We were supposed to find our self-interest, what motivated us to work for social justice. Of course as we went deeper and deeper into this, it became more personal. By the end of the week, people are standing up: people who grew up poor, or were of color, or who had a lot of mental illness in the family, did not talk about oppression in any kind of actual way: they talked about how there families had fallen apart and that they were heartbroken by the time they were four years old because no one had the resources to love them. Those of us who were middle class all week, we would say to each other, what do we do if the oppressor was our family? What does that mean? All of a sudden I had a vision: I had a vision of my family. Now, my family was the perfect – we were perfect, the perfect middle class family in the fifties. My father was a pediatrician.... who was God... in the community. He had seven perfect children and a wife who were there like stones piled up on each other, the heavy weight, the pedestal, to hold up that God. No space in between. My insight was that's why half of us became addicts by the time we were fifteen. That was the insight. How did we do that? Of course we're not perfect! –duh - human beings. So we learned to keep secrets. Whoa, we were good at it. Family secrets. I see some nods: you know how to do it. It wasn't until we all fell – and it hurt: it hurt, it hurt, it hurt – that family fell, my father smashed on the ground, a bitter, bitter man. There we were like these broken

Page 11 UUMA Annual Review Year of 2015 25-Year Sermon rocks, with space in between us. Over the decades, slowly, most of us, had enough room for the spirit to bloweth where it will, it made us new. In those spaces, I will call it love. What e e cummings said, a place of love. A place where yes can germinate into all possible worlds. That has not changed. So as we minister we have learned to look at that intersection of all those roles, identities, in our lives and create space around them so that the spirit blows through us and we cannot get plugged in to all this emotion about authority. In that I have found my role as minister. No matter what my authorized job is, my role, you're role, I believe all our rolls, is to hold the space. It is your role to be the guardian – they call me the boundary ninja at church (laughter) – to be the guardian of the spaces in between, so that the spirit can blow where it will, where yes and no can create something new that we have no idea what it will be.... Hey, I'm getting' old: I don't know what it's gonna be, it's you, here, the younger ones, who are going to pull those spaces into our future where.... it's all we need, all the possibilities are there, so thank you all (a wei to the audience). Transcription notes: Though planned, this sermon existed first as spoken. Only very minor changes have been made. The audience responses noted are part of what created the spaces between. The wei at the end is the little bow with hands together from Thai culture, and the Indian nameste. The speakers grandchildren are half Thai.

Page 12 UUMA AnnualUUMA Review Annual Review Year of 2015 2015 Berry Street Essay Mission Impossible: Why Failure is Not an Option Rev. Sean Parker Dennison

To Heck With Suspense (Introduction) I have a friend, Ksenia, who writes books. In fact, she writes a new book every few months and gives them away online. She also gives writing advice, which has come in handy as I’ve prepared this essay. One piece of her advice was particularly relevant to this essay. She told me, “Do not keep any secrets as you write.” It’s a hard piece of advice to take, and is controversial in the writing world, where some authors suggest you keep the audience hanging for as long as possible, not letting them in on major themes, plot points, or twists until you absolutely have to. To support her side of the argument, my friend quotes Kurt Vonnegut’s eighth rule of writing: Give your readers as much information as possible as soon as possible. To heck with suspense. Readers should have such complete understanding of what is going on, where and why, that they could finish the story themselves, should cockroaches eat the last few pages.[1] My friend even reveals the entire plot of one of her books in the very first sentence, which reads, “Lilith Bloom had a peculiar feeling that the rose garden wanted to eat her.”[2] And so, out of respect for my friend and for you, my audience, I am going to take her advice and tell you right away, without suspense, that this essay is about failure. The title I chose: “Mission Impossible: Why Failure is Not an Option,” is a play on words, an attempt to be clever. But what I mean by “failure is not an option” is not that ministers, Unitarian Universalists, or human beings cannot or should not fail. When I say “failure is not an option,” I mean that we cannot help but fail. If our mission is big enough we will fail. It’s not an option. It is inevitable. Why Admit Failure? Along with avoiding suspense, I promised myself another thing when I agreed to present this essay. I promised myself that I would tell the truth. No distortion, no evasion, no covering up the hard or embarrassing parts, no lies of omission, just the truth. That’s why I started by telling you right off that failure is inevitable. But I need to tell you just as directly that we are already failing. You may be asking yourself, “Why would anyone accept failure and not fight, kicking and screaming, to avoid it?” Believe me, I understand the question. My biggest coping mechanism is what I call “hyper-competence.” When I’m stressed or anxious, I will do it all, all by myself, and what I do will be so amazing and excellent that you could never doubt my value. So truly, I understand that it’s hard to admit failure. It’s hard to admit that I’ve failed in the past, hard to admit I could fail in the

Page 13 UUMA Annual Review Year of 2015 2015 Berry Street Essay future, and hardest of all to admit when I am failing in the moment. And yet, I’m here, telling you this truth: I am and you are and we are failing. Now, I’m certainly not proposing that we intentionally fail or engage in self-sabotage. I’m not suggesting we surrender all hope of success in our ministries, our congregations, and our work for the common good in this world. The real reason I am telling you these truths about failure is that I want to free us all—free us from the fear, the shame, and the isolation—of being people who fail. You see, as long as we fear failure—as long as we use up vast amounts of energy trying to be perfect, absolutely and adamantly competent, we are not going to have the energy to be or become the relevant, responsive, passionate, and growing movement of Unitarian Universalists we yearn to be. As long as we are frozen in our tracks by the fear that we might fail or more accurately, that others might find out we fail, we are stuck thinking small, making only the safest of plans that we already know will succeed. But I am here to tell you: You might as well go ahead and plan to fail, because you’re going to do it anyway. You already are. There’s another reason to admit failure. Study after study that measures the priorities of the (mostly) younger demographic that we hope to attract to our congregations are reporting a major shift. People are no longer swayed or impressed by knowledge. They don’t care about having the Big Truths explained to them in sermons. They no longer turn to ministers for answers to religious or spiritual questions. They turn to Google for those things. We are all now inundated with information, most of which is meant to manipulate us into to clicking, tweeting, posting, or buying something. We don’t need more information and more and more of us don’t trust the sources of the information we already have. Instead of information, people are looking for ways to sort through it, to determine what is helpful, relevant, and worth remembering. And the way they are determining who can help with that is by looking for authenticity. A quick Google search turned up millions (literally) of abstracts, books, and articles on authenticity. People in design, tourism, advertising, event planning, and the culinary arts…are all trying to appear more authentic. Did you hear that? They are trying to appear more authentic. In other words, they are faking it. Their product or brand or restaurant or toothpaste is the best because it is the most sincere, down-to-earth, and authentic. Because that’s what sells. All of this means that people are becoming incredibly sensitive to pretense. They distrust slick, glossy packaging. They abhor insincerity. They like flaws. It seems the next generation of church-goers, if there is to be one, will not care as much about the learnéd ministry as the authentic one. If we are going to be relevant, we have to be real. And that means admitting that we fail. Not only that we might fail or could possibly fail or that we have a great ten-point philosophical understanding of failure, but that we do fail. Right now. We are already failing.

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How We Fail We are failing. And I don’t say that lightly, because frankly, the ways in which we are failing break my heart. I have spent at least some time every day for the past few years considering leaving Unitarian Universalism and ministry. Not because I feel angry or bitter that others have failed me. Not because I doubt myself, or my ability to embody excellence in ministry. I consider leaving the ministry because my heart is constantly breaking—broken so relentlessly that it cannot begin to heal before it is broken again. Maybe a story will help: Once upon a time, when the internet was still shiny and new and there were no blogs, but only LiveJournals and UseNet groups, an independent Baptist minister who called himself “Real Live Preacher” (imagine a carnival barker yelling, “I got your Real Live Preacher right here…”) began writing about ministry and theology and life. I found him online and was fascinated as I watched his fame and community grow. He moved his writing to its own blog domain, signed a book contract and added a chatroom where a motley interfaith crew began hanging out. He was, by all accounts, an internet success. Eventually, this Real Live Preacher and I became friends. Not just “oh-hi-I-know-you-on-the- internet” friends, but “I-call-you-when-my-son-is-in-jail-or-my-teenage-daughter-is-pregnant” friends. We became the kind of friends who understand the whirlwind life of being a minister in a rascally, independent, congregation; the kind of friends who don’t get upset when long silences fall between them and distance keeps them from meeting face-to-face. And then, about three years ago, Real Live Preacher left the ministry. Even though I knew he’d been struggling for a while, I was shocked. I read all his explanations, even picked up the phone and called to hear him say the words himself, but I was still confused and truthfully, scared. This friend and colleague who meant so much to me—whose stories and encouragement and support got me through some of the hardest times of my life—he just…quit. And he was happy about it; or at least, relieved. I didn’t have a chance to ask him about his decision in person until this past November, when I went to Texas over Thanksgiving for some self-care and healing time with a dear colleague. My host graciously allowed me to invite Real Live Preacher to join us at the family tamalada, where we would all get our hands and shirts dirty and our bellies full while stocking the freezer with tamales for Christmas. It was then, after hours of rolling and steaming and packing up tamales, that I finally had the chance to ask. “Tell me, Preacher, why did you leave the ministry? I mean the real reason. The one you don’t tell just everybody. I need to know.” As I remember it, he was silent for a minute—the kind of silence that happens when you know you’re going to say something so true that it could change everything. And then he told me. And what he told me has been like an arrow in my heart and a weight on my chest ever since. His answer is a sore spot in my heart, and I’ve been probing it like a broken tooth ever since, alternately repelled and fascinated by the pain. His answer: “I had to leave the ministry because I could no longer serve the

Page 15 UUMA Annual Review Year of 2015 2015 Berry Street Essay over-served…” Ouch. I could no longer serve the over-served. I will admit that from time to time as I prepared this essay, I imagined recounting every way that in my perception, Unitarian Universalism has missed the mark. But I realized as I listened to my friend that all the disappointment I’d been carrying around and trying to ignore; all the hurt I feel when I’d wanted better from myself, my congregation, or my faith tradition; all the weariness from being singled out as a role model or poster child because of what I am and not who I am; all the sadness that made me wonder daily if I could bear to continue in my calling—it’s all there, in that sentence: “I could no longer serve the over-served.” He named, in seven short words, the sum total of our failure. The Failure of Privilege It’s important to note that this failure is only, in part, the failure of individuals. It is far more the failure of systems and the particular failure of privilege. We have inherited a tradition and culture that have been aligned with the over-served, the privileged, and the powerful. Of course, this privilege and power are not personally true of all of us. And for the majority of us, it is only partially true or only true in some of the times and spaces of our lives. But as a whole, the culture that defines us is one of privilege. Yes, it is true that only half our name and history are aligned with social privilege, but as is often true when mergers happen, the culture with more practice being in power becomes dominant. And so we are more like our Unitarian ancestors than we are like our Universalist ones. We have inherited a system of expectations, habits, and beliefs about ourselves and the world that reflect this pattern of power and privilege. Whether we like it or not, whether we notice it or not, whether it serves us or not, this is our position. In this we are not alone. Walter Brueggemann wrote an entire book for those of us who share this position. He called it Prayers for a Privileged People and in it are these words: We are a people of privilege and entitlement. We are among the haves— we have education, connections, power, and wealth. Too often we are indulgent and self-sufficient consumers. We speak of our achievements and accomplishments. Sometimes we offer God liturgies of disregard, litanies of selves made too big. But we hear faint reminders of a

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better way.[3] We are part of a system that is steeped in habits of privilege. These habits become a part of us; we internalize and replicate them without conscious thought. And these patterns we’ve inherited are the biggest part of how we are failing. While privilege confers power and status and opportunity, it also proscribes certain kinds of awareness and relationships. The very basis of privilege is the notion that some people are more worthy than others, that their ideas, needs, and very existence is more important. If you ask any one of us, we will tell you that this isn’t true, that all people are equal and worthy. But the system is insidious and persistent, and teaches us to continually judge and rank people. There is only one powerful criterion we use to judge: how close any one of us is to a very specific ideal of perfection. We all know what perfection is. Perfection is young. It is white. It is male. It is healthy. It is able-bodied. It is thin. It is athletic. It is heterosexual. It is Christian. It is economically “comfortable.” Each and every one of us is measured against this ideal. And we are all taught to measure each other as well. And when any one of us is judged to be lacking, it is never the fault of the system or the standards, but the fault of the individual, who just didn’t measure up. According to the system, people who do not measure up are less important, less worthy, and just matter less. We have seen, in so many ways over the past weeks and months, this ideology at its most extreme. We have seen what happens when people believe that some lives matter more than others. We have seen murder, violence, incarceration, exile, homelessness, terrorism, and poverty. And even as we cringe at these things, we find we too have absorbed this mental organizational chart, this way of looking at the world, ourselves, and each other. And in another of its big tricks, the closer we are to the ideal, the less likely we are to notice the whole scheme. We think it is just the way things are. And that helps the scheme replicate itself in every interaction, every Facebook post, every time we decide whether or not to take a risk, talk to a stranger, clutch our purse or lock our doors. This system is cunning and crafty and it manages to infiltrate our thoughts and our communities so fully that no one is immune. One can internalize and employ it toward others or toward one’s self. We’ve seen the religious right be brutal and vocal with their judgments. They openly blame the ills of society—human tragedies or natural disasters—on people they believe to be impure and imperfect. But they are not alone. I am noticing the increasing use of internet shaming on all sides: from publishing the names and addresses of those accused of wasting water, to a kind of vicious joy at calling out the mistakes and excesses of celebrities. Yes, people say and do stupid, unkind, and unjust things. And yes, we can and should critique them. But more and more, I see people demanding perfection—ideological and behavioral purity—in a way that I recognize. And when someone is judged to be “problematic” I see a new but familiar kind of shaming and shunning. All of this is just another way the hierarchy of perfection exerts its influence, punishing mistakes and failure and demanding perfection. Ultimately, the obsession with who is good enough, pure enough, right enough dehumanizes us all.

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It dehumanizes the ones being judged and rejected, but also the ones doing the judging, who must distance themselves from their own humanity and the other’s. This culture of judgment destroys human connection and community and amplifies the messages of hierarchy and inequality. Not only are we taught to idolize the myth of perfection, but we are trained to fear difference, to fear making mistakes, to fear being or becoming the imperfect one. Because we have all internalized this fear—no matter how near or far we are to the impossible ideal—we must continuously try to cover up the parts of ourselves that don’t measure up. We live with the constant anxiety that to be judged less -than-perfect means we are therefore less worthy. The system has taught us that our value comes from our proximity to perfection. No wonder we fear failure! This fear of failure keeps us isolated, but it can also incapacitate us. Even if we believe and yearn to contradict the system and to fight the resulting oppression and colonialism, we are often immobilized by the fear that we cannot or will not succeed. Dr. Crystal Marie Fleming, Assistant Professor of Sociology and Africana Studies at Stony Brook University, made this point powerfully clear on Twitter this week, when she reminded us, “We must be willing to challenge racial oppression without reaching for or lapsing into liberal fairytales about "ending" racism.”[4] We cannot allow the system to scare us into inaction, keeping us petrified and frozen because we might fail and therefore allow oppression to continue unchallenged. Walter Brueggemann’s poem ended with the words, “But we hear faint reminders of a better way.” This better way is, perhaps, the reason religion exists at all and why it too is constantly failing and being reformed. A responsible and mature faith dethrones us from the pretense of perfection and accepts that we will fail; that we are failing. Ironically, the fear of failure causes us to fail in this way. Because we fear failing, we are failing. A Big Enough Mission to Fail The terrible effect of a system that constantly judges us, evaluates our every action, and shames us for not being perfect is that we begin to limit ourselves. We stop dreaming big. We insist on realism and practicality in all our plans. We begin to pride ourselves on being “dispassionate.” We rely on the already known: information rather than inspiration. We seek advice from people who we feel understand the limits of our resources and capacity. We dismiss and defend ourselves from people who urge us to do more and dream bigger. We may even begin to shame people with big ideas, branding them trouble-makers or fools. “How can they ask such irrational, illogical, or unrealistic things of us?” We do all this—creating conflict and division in our community—because we are afraid, but also because we are tired, uninspired, burned out. Without vision, the people perish. And people who feel as if they are perishing are all-too-tempted to trade the work of creating Paradise on earth for a strategic plan with a goal of ten new congregations in five years. Or just one pledge drive that will actually balance the budget. This, this is how we fail. Our vision and mission become too safe, too small.

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I long for Unitarian Universalists to be claimed by a “mission impossible.” I don’t mean write a mission statement or create a mission. I mean be claimed by a mission so big it startles and scares us: a mission like the congregation in my home town that put up a banner that said simply, “We feed the hungry.” And they did, by opening a soup kitchen, a food pantry, and an after-school program. They fed the hungry by gathering for spiritual sustenance, building relationships that broke through isolation so they could truly begin to love their neighbors as themselves. And the congregation grew and thrived and had to expand their building to hold everything they needed to live into their mission. I long for us to be claimed by a mission that is bold and huge and daring. Maybe: “Unitarian Universalists Show Up.” Wherever there is a need, a crisis, a cry for justice or for a supportive presence, Unitarian Universalists would show up. We wouldn’t have to lead. We wouldn’t have to plan long-term strategies. We’d just show up wherever we are needed or whenever we are asked. Imagine our reputation: “If you need people to clean up a creek bed or march in a Pride parade, or protest injustice or help protect Muslim worshipers at prayer—call the Unitarian Universalists, they show up!” I am a firm believer that what will save us—or will at least increase the odds of us being relevant and growing movement we hope to be—is a mission so grand, so BIG, that it is impossible. Call it creating heaven on earth, or building Beloved Community, or repairing the world—it is something so audacious that it demands that we lay aside our culture of caution, our desire to prove our efficacy, and our fear of failure. Our mission would be so big and have such a claim upon us, that even in we messed up, we’d keep trying. Because no matter how big our mission, we still wouldn’t be perfect. We might show up when we weren’t really needed. Or we might say or do the wrong thing in an unfamiliar situation. Or maybe, maybe we would fail to show up when our presence would have made a difference. And we’d have to find ways to admit our failure, make amends, recommit ourselves to our mission and try again. I’m okay with that. Because by trying to live up to our impossible mission, we would learn and grow and be in the places where we were needed and we would learn a new kind of courage, a new way of being brave. Creativity, Art, and Failure Neil Gaiman, who is a writer and creator of many things, gave a commencement speech that was later published as a book. In it, he urges: I hope you’ll make mistakes. If you’re making mistakes, it means you’re out there doing something… Make interesting, amazing, glorious, fantastic mistakes. Break rules. Leave the world more interesting for your being here. Make. Good. art.[5] I hear something in Mr. Gaiman’s words that inspires me to a new kind of courage, to new ways of being brave. If our congregations are going to be relevant, I think we ministers have to lead the way. And we have to lead without—or at least, in spite of—the fear of failure. Perhaps, we can learn some

Page 19 UUMA Annual Review Year of 2015 2015 Berry Street Essay of this by reconnecting with the muses, playful and dangerous partners that they are. Art and spirit are close kin—the only two realms in which people talk openly about inspiration— about being claimed by the beauty of a thing or an idea or a cause. For centuries if you wanted to see art, you would head to a cathedral, temple, or mosque. You might walk through gardens made to resemble paradise on earth or be bathed in light filtering through stories told in glass. For millennia, people understood art to be a gateway to spirit and spirit to be at work in art. Only in the past few centuries, as industry and capital have begun to determine what is of value, has art been demoted to an avocation, a hobby. When I was planning my most recent project—Cabaret Church—we used a quote by Jennifer Yane as our motto: “Art is spirituality in drag.” It may have made people laugh, but I hope it made them think as well. Art and spirituality are deeply connected, and I think we have much to gain by reclaiming not just a connection to art, but a sense of ourselves as artists and the work of ministry as art. Another story: At the end of my first year at my current congregation, Tree of Life, (Unitarian Universalist Congregation in McHenry, IL) it was clear to me that I was ministering to a community of artists. Our hundred-and-forty-member congregation has a thirty-member choir that honestly, can sing anything. Our awesome Music Director, Tom Steffens, takes every idea I offer and makes it awesome. This year, just to name a few, they sang “Anthem” by Leonard Cohen, my favorite gospel song “The Storm is Passing Over” and R.E.M’s “Everybody Hurts.” (Yes, I’m bragging.) But it’s not just music. We have actors, sculptors, fabric artists, painters, poets, and glass artists. I can’t think of anyone in my congregation who doesn’t make art. Even the chair of my Endowment Trustees plays the banjo and sings at our coffee house. One Sunday after the service, I was talking to a few board members, and I spontaneously asked, “So, when I say ‘minister,’ what image comes to mind?” Their list was unsurprising, “He’s tall and thin, in his mid-fifties, has gray hair and a beard, wears black, and he is very serious. Next I asked, “What about when I say ‘artist?’ What do you imagine then?” “Oh, she’s young! She has blue hair and tattoos and wears colorful, funky clothes and she is lively and unique and FUN!” As I observed these long-time leaders of my congregation, it wasn’t the answers they gave, but the way they gave them that caught my attention. They spoke with joy and enthusiasm, with heart! When I pointed out the change of energy in the room, we agreed that we would experiment with trading our mental image of “The Minister” for that of “Artist.” They laughed and said, “Now you’re going to dye your hair blue, aren’t you?” And I said, “Maybe.” And the chair of the Board said, “Good!” Something began to shift and we began to claim art as part of our mission and it began to

Page 20 UUMA AnnualUUMA Review Annual Review Year of 2015 2015 Berry Street Essay change us. When I said at a planning meeting, “I really should probably teach a class on UU history…” they were savvy enough to ask, “Hmm…is that your “serious-minister-all-in-black” showing up? What do you want to teach?” When I answered, “Well, there is this poetry class I’ve taught a couple of times…”they said, “THAT! Teach that!” And so I did. Nine women signed up for the class. Four of them were already leaders in the congregation. Two came because they wanted to get to know people better. A mom and daughter decided to take the class together. The ninth woman was new. She’d been on our mailing list because she’d once attended a documentary film we’d shown. That very week her therapist encouraged her to start a writing practice and she saw our poetry class in the newsletter and spontaneously signed up. As we introduced ourselves, she mentioned that she attended a local evangelical mega-church. The next week the assignment was: “Write a poem that tells a very short story.” When it came time to share, the newcomer blurted out, “I’m really terrified to read this. I’ve been terrified all day. Can I please go first?” We agreed and she introduced her poem by telling us that she was in counseling because her marriage was abusive, and she was wrestling with what to do. She then read the most honest and painfully beautiful poem telling a story of power and control that while deeply personal, was also a story anyone who had known abuse would find familiar. In that moment, the class became more than a bunch of people who wanted to experiment with writing poetry. We were claimed by a mission—the most fundamental mission of art—the mission of truth-telling. From that moment on, none of us could share a single poem that pretended to be something it was not. We bonded into a community that could tell and hear truth. More than that, the Unitarian Universalists in the class gained—seemingly instantaneously—the ability to interpret and accept words spoken in a language of faith that they themselves had rejected. No one felt the need to correct her when she said, “God bless you” or to dismiss her when she said, “Praise the Lord.” The mission of truth-telling was too important. About halfway through the class, she found the courage to move into a local shelter. It was hard for her to be there, and she kept writing poems and we kept listening, without judgment, without correction. Her poems told her story and we learned the terrifying truth of the danger she was in. We heard how the leaders of her church told her to go home, to have faith, and to pray. She couldn’t tell them what she’d told us: that she’d locked his guns in the trunk of her car because she was afraid he would kill her while she slept. We held her and heard her truth and shared a profound artful and spiritual community. She didn’t become Unitarian Universalist and like many women in her position, she struggled, returned home, left again. Her road to freedom and safety will likely continue to be bumpy, but her willingness to be honest made it possible for all of us to set aside the façade of perfectionism and connect around our common, flawed, humanity. Together, we witnessed two things: the value of her life and each life, no matter how far from perfect; and the power of art in spiritual community to affirm that value and beauty. In this small circle of truth-tellers she could see herself—flaws and all—

Page 21 UUMA Annual Review Year of 2015 2015 Berry Street Essay through our eyes, and ultimately, through our theyology—a theyology in which eternal, all-embracing Love would never, ever let her go. She didn’t become an Unitarian Universalist, but she knows we’re here. She knows there is a religious community that doesn’t believe she is being punished, doesn’t blame her for the abuse, and will not abandon her for being human. Art is healing. Making good art is more than paint on canvas or a moving melody line or beautiful turn of phrase. Making good art is opening our hearts—our whole beings—to the emotion, inspiration, pain, and courage of being alive. Making good art demands that we let go and allow ourselves to be claimed by something bigger than our egos, something bigger than our fear. Making good art means being willing to face the inevitable messes and mistakes and be brave. When we do this, we sometimes succeed in ways we could never have imagined. Theyologies of Failure & Forgiveness Like many of you, I do something now and then that terrifies me just a little: I put a sermon up for sale at the annual fundraising auction. The winning bidder gets to determine the subject of the sermon, and I’m always afraid the buyer will try to stump me by picking a subject they know I know nothing about. I have had a couple of close calls: a sermon on near-death experience and another on the wisdom of Libertarianism. But even more fascinating than the possible trickster sermons is the one topic that has come up more regularly than any other. At least four of the sermons that people have asked me to preach—have been willing to pay for me to preach—have been on forgiveness. As Unitarian Universalists, we don’t start our religious story with predestined shame or mutually- assured damnation. I am thankful for that, and yet sometimes I fear we’ve missed the theyological point. Just because we don’t believe in original sin, that doesn’t mean we are perfect. And when the inevitable pain and disappointment come—when people fail us, or we fail ourselves and each other— we find ourselves deeply in need of theyologies and practices of forgiveness. And yet our Unitarian Universalist principles and purposes don’t mention forgiveness. We have no season of forgiveness, no ritual of repentance, no confessional. There is promise in our Universalism, but we have yet to articulate much more than a vague understanding that somehow, it is possible for us to be reconciled, to return to right relationship no matter how we have failed. We make mistakes—sometimes huge, painful, messy ones—and we feel the consequences of the mistakes of others. We need theyologies of forgiveness, ways to make things right. Without them, we are stuck, doomed to a hard-hearted pretense of perfection. Our colleague, Marlin Lavanhar named something in a sermon a few years ago that I have not forgotten. He said, “One mistake we often make is trying to lead with our strengths rather than our heartbreak.”[6] Thank you, Marlin, for naming that so clearly. What we need to do, if our movement is going to resonate with the “nones” or the “dones” we hear so much about, is to lead with our heartbreak, even with our failure. We need to counter the culture of purity and perfectionism with a Universalist theyology of love and with new practices that teach us that we will not be rejected, but can find our way back when we fail.

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Failure is not easy. If I’ve made light of it in any way, I am truly sorry. Even small failures are embarrassing and big failures are devastating. Forgiveness is not easy either. Despite the pop-culture books and memes with pretty pictures and promises, forgiveness is hard spiritual work. Educator and feminist bell hooks, who I believe is one of the greatest thinkers in recent times, said: For me forgiveness and compassion are always linked: how do we hold people accountable for wrongdoing and yet at the same time remain in touch with their humanity enough to believe in their capacity to be transformed?[7] What bell hooks is asking is something we have needed for a very long time. This is the other side of the theyology of covenant—the acknowledgement that we have, indeed, broken our vows a thousand times. Only when we begin to form practices that help us live into this theyology can we stop replicating the systems that divide and destroy, that break hearts and threaten to break the whole world. To ask for forgiveness or to offer it is a struggle every time, because it is our relationships that bear the brunt of our imperfection. Sometimes those relationships cannot bear the strain. Sometimes our hearts break. Yet, if we can offer ourselves, each other, and the world theyologies, practices, and rituals of forgiveness that are worthy of our ancestors and their daring vision of Love that will not let a single one of us go, we will begin to heal what is broken. Those in our movement who are urging us to become more missional—to be claimed by a mission, rather than expecting people to be attracted to Unitarian Universalism because we’re so awesome— ask a question that I have been grappling with since I first heard it a few years ago: “For whom does your heart break?” This question is aimed at getting us to stop pretending that we are or can ever be perfect and to stop buying into the system that wants us to blame others for their suffering. “For whom does your heart break?” There are so many possible answers and each one could claim us, could become our mission. Each one could free us from worrying we must be saved by our competence, by achieving perfection. Each encourages us to admit that while we’ve been good at articulating covenants, we keep failing at living them out. “For whom does your heart break?” I told you in the beginning of this essay that I hoped that by acknowledging our failure, we might discover a kind of freedom—the freedom to be fully human, to be honest and to stop trying to convince ourselves, our congregations, or God that we are perfect. This radical act of admitting we fail, of casting off the addiction to perfection that is rooted in systems of empire and privilege, is what has claimed me. When I imagine us claimed by this mission, I find that my heart and my faith and my hope for this world begin to heal. Author and educator Parker Palmer wrote words that have sustained me through times of near despair: Wholeness does not mean perfection: it means embracing brokenness as an integral part of life. Knowing this gives me hope that human wholeness — mine, yours, ours — need not be a utopian

Page 23 UUMA Annual Review Year of 2015 2015 Berry Street Essay dream, if we can use devastation as a seedbed for new life.[8] This is my hope, that we can use devastation—failure, heartbreak, brokenness—as the seedbed for a new, growing, and alive Unitarian Universalism. That we will take up the work that lies before us: to refuse to be hardened by the constant demand for perfection; to create tools of compassion that can help us to forgive ourselves and each other; and to make good art of our lives and ministries—good, messy, imperfect, and beautiful art. May it be so. May we be the ones that make it so. Amen. Ashé. And Blessed Be. [1]: Vonnegut, Kurt, Bagombo Snuff Box, Putnam, (1999) [2]: Anske, Ksenia, Rosehead: A Novel, self-published, (2014) [3]: Brueggemann, Walter, Prayers for a Privileged People, Abingdon Press (2010) [4]: Fleming, Crystal Marie, Twitter, https://twitter.com/alwaystheself/status/612113893310242816, (2015) [5]: Gaiman, Neil, Neil Gaiman’s ‘Make Good Art’ Speech, William Morrow, (2014) [6]: Lavanhar, Marlin, “A Calling for US,” delivered to the General Assembly of the Unitarian Universalist Association, Fort Lauderdale, FL, (2008) [7]: Hooks, bell, in an interview with Maya Angelou, Shambala Sun, (Jan 1998) [8]: Palmer, Parker, A Hidden Wholeness, Jossey-Bass, (2004)

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The Rev. Dr. Roberta M. “Bobbie” Nelson died on January 2, 2015 at the age of 79. Bobbie was born on June 9, 1935 to Raymond A. Martin and Vera R. Martin. She graduated from Tufts University, with a Bachelor of Science, in 1958. She was awarded an honorary Doctor of Divinity degree from Meadville Lombard Theological School in 1996. Bobbie was certified as an Accredited Director of Religious Education by the Unitarian Universalist Association (UUA) in 1967. She served as Director of Religious Education to First Parish in Needham, MA from 1959 to 1973, and to Fairfax Unitarian Church of Oakton, VA from 1973 to 1980. She was ordained to the ministry in 1980 by the Fairfax Church, and then served as their Minister of Religious Education from 1980 to 1987. She went on to serve as Minister of Religious Education to Cedar Lane Unitarian Universalist Church of Bethesda, MD from 1987 to 2001, and was named their Minister Emerita in 2002. Rev. Nelson stayed engaged with the denomination at large throughout the entirety of her career, and was involved in groundbreaking projects. She was active within the Liberal Religious Educators Association (LREDA), and served as Secretary, Vice-President and President. She chaired the Sexuality Education Task Force, a former project of the UUA and United Church of Christ (UCC), and served on the UUA and Meadville Lombard joint Envisioning Committee concerning the Transition of the Independent Study Program (ISP) from the UUA to Meadville Lombard, and the establishment of the Sophia Lyon Fahs Center at Meadville Lombard. She was an advisor to candidates in the ISP and Modified Residency Program from 1971 to 2008. She served on a myriad of UUA committees, and served on the Board of the Unitarian Universalist Ministers Association (UUMA) and as vice president from 2001 to 2004. Rev. Nelson was a major interpreter and trainer of the UUA’s About Your Sexuality (AYS) Program, and led countless AYS teacher training workshops. The program was launched in 1971, and was run by Unitarian Universalist congregations for over 25 years. With her husband, Chris Nelson, Bobbie coauthored the curricula, Parents as Resident Theologians, Parents as Spiritual Guides, and Parents as Social Justice Educators. Rev. Nelson received the Angus H. MacLean Award for Excellence in Religious Education in 1975; the Larry Axel Award for Teaching Excellence from Meadville Lombard and the Unitarian Universalist Women’s Federation Ministry to Women Award, both in 2001. In 2002, she was selected as the UUMA’s Berry Street Essayist. Rev. Nelson’s colleagues and family members recall her willingness to speak up for things that she felt strongly about. “She was never afraid or hesitant,” her husband, Chris Nelson, remembers. Bobbie’s commitment to speaking her truth led her to serve as the spokesperson chosen to defend the About Your Sexuality program when it was under attack on the national television segment, Public Eye with Bryant Gumbel. Former colleague Judith A. Frediani writes, ‘For forty years, when Unitarian Universalist religious education needed a voice, Bobbie spoke out. Whenever leadership

Page 25 UUMA Annual Review Year of 2015 And We Remember... was called for, Bobbie was called.” Bobbie enjoyed traveling, reading, cooking, and entertaining. Post-retirement, she volunteered at an elementary school and treasured the hours she spent with first and second graders. “A wink or a hint of a smile became her last words but love, courage, and faith sustained her to the end. She died at peace,” said her husband, Chris Nelson. Bobbie is survived by her husband of 54 years, Christopher “Chris” B. Nelson; daughters, Heather Nelson, Joy Saams (John), and Jennifer Nelson; grandchildren Jack, James, and Julia Saams; and brother, Donald A. Martin (Jean). In lieu of flowers, donations in her memory can be made to: Roberta Nelson Prize for Excellence in Religious Education at Meadville Lombard Theological School, 610 S. Michigan Avenue, Chicago, IL 60603 or to The Star Island Corporation Morton-Benedict House, 30 Middle St., Portsmouth, NH 03801 Notes of condolences may be sent to the family at 41 Astbury Lane, Sedgwick, ME 04676-3423.

The Rev. Stanley Aronson died on January 12, 2015, at the age of 81. Stanley was born on June 5, 1933 to Abraham and Tillie Aronson. He attended Temple University, and graduated with a Doctor of Podiatry in 1958. He served in the United States Army Medical Service Corps from 1959 to 1962; then worked as a podiatrist and a disc jockey before entering seminary. He graduated with a Master of Divinity from Starr King School for the Ministry in 1982. Rev. Aronson was ordained to the ministry in 1982 by the First Unitarian Church of Berkeley, CA (now the Unitarian Universalist Church of Berkeley in Kensington, CA). He was first called to serve as Interim Minister to the First Unitarian Congregation of Toronto, and he served there for one year. From 1982 to 1985, he served as extension minister to the Unitarian Fellowship of Houston, TX, the Bay Area Unitarian Fellowship of Houston, TX, and the Unitarian Universalist Fellowship of Galveston County, TX. He then served as Urban Extension Minister to the First Unitarian Universalist Church of Detroit, MI from 1985 to 1988; Interim Minister to the First Unitarian Universalist Society of Albany, NY from 1988 to 1989; Interim Minister to the Unitarian Universalist Fellowship of Centre County of State College, PA, from 1989 to 1990; and Minister to the Unitarian Universalist Society of Stamford, CT from 1990 to 1999. He was elected Minister Emeritus to the Unitarian Universalist Society of Stamford, CT in 1999. Rev. Aronson served in various denominational and community organizations. His involvement included, but was not limited to, serving as Co-Chair of the Urban Church Coalition of the Unitarian Universalist Association (UUA); Co-Chair of the Unitarian Universalist District of Michigan (UUDOM) Extension Committee; and Good Offices Person and Chapter President of the UUDOM- Unitarian Universalist Ministers Association. He also served as Board Member of the Michigan Coalition for Human Rights; Member of the Interfaith Conference on Liberal Religion; Board

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Member of the Pacific House Shelter for the Homeless; Vice President of the Council on Churches/ Synagogues; Committee Member of the Interfaith AIDS Advisory Committee; and Founding Member of the Interfaith Dialogue Task Force Stanley had a wide range of interests, including writing, music, exercising, and film. A Harley Davidson enthusiast, he rode his Harley coast to coast, from Berkeley, California to Toronto, Canada during the late 1970’s, a journey that took almost a month to complete. He loved the New York Times crossword puzzles and would often be able to complete the Sunday editions. Stanley was very social, and according to his son, Brad, “died having had more friends than most could only dream of having.” Stanley’s son, Brad, remembers his father as an “empathetic person” with a “great sense of humor.” Brad is proud of his father’s counseling skills, and his ability to listen and guide without passing judgment. “He was a very giving and generous father,” said Brad, “and he was always there for us.” He is survived by his sons, Greg (Aileen); Kevin (Christina); and Brad (Joey); grandchildren, Sean and Ryan; and great grandchildren, Christian, Alexis, Gracie, and Preston. Notes of condolences may be sent to Brad Aronson, 1262 Truchard Lane, Lincoln, CA 95648.

The Rev. Robert “Bob” Merrill Hemstreet died on February 11, 2015, at the age of 84. Bob was born to Albert B. Hemstreet and Beatrice Merrill Hemstreet on May 25, 1930 in Rochester, N.Y. He graduated with a Bachelor of Arts from New York University in 1952. Bob was drafted into the U.S. Army in 1953, and he served until 1955, at which point he was honorably discharged. He went on to study at Crane Theological School at Tufts University, and graduated with a Master of Divinity in 1964. Rev. Hemstreet was ordained by the First Unitarian Church at Hamilton, Ontario, Canada in 1964, and served as minister to the First Unitarian Church from 1964 to 1968. From 1969 to 1972, he served as Minister-at-Large to the Greater Wilmington Council of Unitarian Universalist Societies, ministering half time to fellowships in West Chester, PA and Newark, DE. He next served as full time minister to the Unitarian Fellowship of Newark, DE from 1972 to 1975, and as weekend minister in York, PA from 1973 to 1974. He went on to serve as minister to the UU Church of Flushing, NY from 1976 to 1995; and was elected Minister Emeritus from UU Church of Flushing in 1999, a title he held until his death. Rev. Hemstreet was devoted to, and active within, the denomination. Following the 1961 merger of Unitarianism and Universalism, he pushed for the adoption of a set of purposes and principles as a unifying guide that all congregations could affirm and promote. Throughout his ministry, he engaged with the faith in varying capacities - he served as president of three Unitarian Universalist Ministers Association chapters (St. Lawrence, Joseph Priestley and Metro NY); board member of the New York

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Metro District; trustee of the St. Lawrence Foundation for Theological Education from 1979 to 1985; member of a Flushing interfaith clergy group; and founder and elected president of Unitarian Universalists for Socialism in 1988. Bob strongly identified as a UU Humanist, and wrote extensively about Humanism as a religious path. He famously created the Thanksgiving Cider and Cornbread Communion, a service that has been widely anthologized and is now an annual feature of many UU congregations across the continent. He loved Star Island, and was an enthusiastic participant in the annual Institute for Religion in an Age of Science conference. Dedicated to bettering his community and the world at large, Bob was very active in the IARF. He held the position of IARF American Chapter President from 1981 to 1984, and traveled to Europe several times for IARF related events. Bob got his start in the anti-racist and socialist movements in his mid-teens, as a follower of C.L.R. James, an activist and author from Trinidad and Tobago. He remained an activist on behalf of the disenfranchised his whole life. When the call went out to go down to Selma, Alabama after James Reeb's murder, Bob knew he needed to go. A former congregant of Bob’s felt it was so important for him to travel to Selma that he emptied the cash register in the store he owned, and gave Bob the $300. Bob answered the call. Closer to home, he co-founded the original Queens Amnesty International chapter during the late 1970's; and served on the boards of the Queens Historical Society, the Queens Council of Churches, and the Queens Network for Intergroup Harmony. Bob was introduced quite early in life to religion and ministry. As a child, he was mentored by an Episcopal priest, and served as an altar boy in the Episcopal Church; additionally, Bob’s grandfather served as an Episcopal priest to the deaf. Bob’s childhood home was located in Canton, NY near St. Lawrence University Theological School, and his grandmother rented out rooms to theology students. Ever curious and eager to learn, Bob spent many nights with his ear pressed against a bedroom door, intently listening to the students’ theological discussions. Bob’s interests were deeply embedded in his work; he found joy within social justice work and preaching. Very much the intellectual, he was an avid article clipper, and appreciated reading, writing and music. His loving wife, Wendy, remembers Bob as one who was “always searching,” even in his final days. He is survived by his wife, Wendy Moscow, and his stepsister, Gail Fiorelli. In lieu of flowers, donations may be made to the Unitarian Universalist Service Committee, 689 Massachusetts Avenue, Cambridge, MA 02139-3302 (http://www.uusc.org/). Notes of condolences may be sent to Wendy Moscow, 25-18 Union Street, #5E, Flushing, NY 11354.

The Rev. H. Carlton Moore, Jr. died on February 19th, at the age of 80. Carlton was born on May 5, 1934 to Herbert Carlton, Sr. and Lillian Moore. He graduated from Tufts University with a Bachelor of Science in Civil Engineering in 1956, and from Crane Theological School with a Master of Divinity in 1967.

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Rev. Moore was ordained by the First Congregational Parish (Unitarian) of Norton, MA, in 1967. He was subsequently called to the First Congregational Parish, and he served as full time minister until 1970. From 1970 to 1995, Rev. Moore guest preached at over fifty congregations throughout Massachusetts, and spent his weekdays teaching and counselling students as a Professor of Engineering at Wentworth College. His pastorate at First Congregational Parish did not end in 1970, however. He continued to serve as the congregation's Minister of Religious Education and part time minister for the better part of the following twenty five years, leading many Sunday worship services, and keeping the doors of the church open to all. Rev. Moore served as co-chairman of Board of Directors of the Cedar Hill Retreat Center, in Duxbury, MA, and chairperson of the Cedar Hill Committee. He also served on the Board of Directors of the Norton Public Library and the Daggett Crandall Newcomb Home in Norton; he served on both boards for over 30 years. Carlton kept busy during his free time by beekeeping, baking bread, and making wine. He was an avid reader; his daughters remember that he was “always in his reading chair.” He presided over the marriages of his three daughters, and he is remembered by congregants and friends as a “gentle giant,” who was “very active in the community.” Carlton is survived by his daughter, Emily C. Minihane (James), Rebecca M. Raymond (David), and Meredith M. Owens (James); sister, Carol MacLennan; and grandchildren, Lillian, Charlotte, Madeleine, John, Lydia, Alice, Cole, and Mason. He is predeceased by his wife Camilla C .Moore; and son, Warren C. Moore. In lieu of flowers, donations in memory of Herbert may be made to Dana Farber Cancer Institute, 450 Brookline Ave., Boston, MA 02215 or to Daggett Crandall Newcomb Home, 55 Newland St. Norton, MA 02766. Notes of condolences may be sent to Mrs. Emily Minihane, 15 Vine Street, Franklin, MA 02038.

Rev. Philip A. Smith died on March 3, 2015 at the age of 84. Philip was born on September 15, 1930 to Philip and Blanche Smith. He graduated Tufts College (now Tufts University) with a Bachelor of Art in 1954, and from Crane Theological School of Tufts with a Master of Divinity in 1957. Rev. Smith was ordained by the Second Parish (Unitarian) of Marlboro, MA in 1957. He served as minister to the Second Parish (Unitarian) from 1957 to 1960. While holding that pastorate, he also served as associate chaplain to a prison in Norfolk, MA from 1958 to 1960. He went on to serve the First Unitarian Church in Louisville, KY from 1960 to 1963; and the Riverside Unitarian Church from 1963 to 1980. Rev. Smith was a committed civil rights activist, and a spokesperson for social justice. Following the

Page 29 UUMA Annual Review Year of 2015 And We Remember... murder of James Reeb in 1965, Rev. Smith traveled to Selma, AL and marched from Selma to Montgomery. Throughout the 1960’s, he fearlessly led desegregation marches for the activist group, Congress of Racial Equality (CORE), and served as an active member of the group. Additional community activities involved serving as an adult adviser to CORE in Louisville, KY; member of the Louisville Executive Board of the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People (NAACP); member of the Board of Directors of the Kentucky Civil Liberties Union; and co-founder and co-chairman of Kentucky Committee to Abolish Capital Punishment. While serving the Riverside Unitarian Church, Philip trained as a psychotherapist. He received the CA license in Marriage, Family, Child Counseling in 1970, and from 1970 to 1980, he practiced psychotherapy while ministering to the Riverside Congregation. Upon his retirement from ministry in 1980, Philip practiced psychotherapy full time. Philip was very much a maverick, and valued individual creativity. He encouraged others to hold on to their uniqueness, and exhibit it with pride. He is remembered by family and friends for his love of laughter and his appreciation of life; his final words were “thank you.” Philip is survived by his wife, Sharon Rose Smith; son, Gabe Smith (Cindie); daughter, Bryony Smith; grandchildren, Ryan, Andy and Ashley; two great-grandchildren; and brothers, Jim, Tom, and Paul. In lieu of flowers, donations may be made to the American Civil Liberties Union (American Civil Liberties Union). Notes of condolences may be sent to Sharon Smith, 242 N. East St. #22, Amherst, MA 01002.

The Rev. Janet Boykin Johnson died on March 25, 2015 at the age of 72. Janet was born on June 4, 1942 to Thelma and Hubert Dallas. She graduated from Hunter College, in 1966, with a Bachelor of Arts Degree and from the University of Chicago with a Master of Social Work in 1972. She went on to attend Starr King School for the Ministry, and graduated with a Master of Divinity in 2002. Rev. Johnson was ordained to the ministry in 2002 by the First Unitarian Society of Chicago, IL. Subsequently, she served as a chaplain to cancer patients at a hospital in Richmond, CA. She left the hospital in 2004 and started a private spiritual direction practice. From 2004 to 2007 she worked in the practice and as a part time minister to the Mt. Diablo Church of Walnut Creek, CA. She was called to serve as consulting minister to the Unitarian Universalist Church of Cortland, NY, in 2008, and served at Cortland until her retirement in 2013. Prior to serving the ministry, Janet worked as a social worker within the Chicago Public School System for 18 years. During that time, Janet was also an active member of the First Unitarian Society of Chicago, and caretaker to two grandsons, whom she adopted, Jason Johnson and (the late) Justin Johnson.

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Janet was very involved in community affairs, and ministered to the public long before receiving fellowship. While living in Chicago, she was on the Board of Directors of the River Oaks Towne Houses Cooperative and was a member of Amnesty International. Also during this time, from 1975 to 1992, she served as host and program coordinator of the international nonprofit, Experiment in International Living. Her duties included hosting exchange students from Germany, Japan, Mexico, and Brazil. After moving to California, Janet sat on several pastoral care hospital boards, and co- managed a clothing store operated by the Chaplaincy for the Homeless. Janet enjoyed camping, knitting, crocheting, reading poetry, and listening to music Janet is survived by her two daughters, Kimari Johnson and Kairis (Boykin) Bonella; her grandsons, Jason Johnson, Joseph Clayton, Jr., Johann Curry, Nieko Bonella, Angelo Bonella and Anton Klinnert; a son-in-law, Valentin Klinnert; step-children, Michele Freeny and Teren Johnson; first cousin, Thelma Williams and many distant cousins. For more information about where to send cards, flowers, and/or donations, please e-mail [email protected].

Rev. Glyn Pruce died on June 1, 2015 at the age of 86. Glyn was born on December 25, 1928, in London, England, to John and Ethel Pruce. He received a Bachelor of Arts from the London Polytechnic Institute in 1954; a Diploma in Ministry from Manchester College (of Oxford, England) in 1958; a Bachelor of Sacred Theology (S.T.B.) from Boston University in 1965; and a Master of Arts in Theology from Boston University in 1970. Rev. Pruce was ordained by the General Assembly of Unitarian and Free Christian Churches in London, England in 1958, and received Unitarian Universalist ministerial fellowship in 1973. He served as interim minister to the Unitarian Universalist Congregation of Atlanta, GA from 1974 to 1975; minister to the Lakeshore Unitarian Church of Pointe Claire, Quebec from 1975 to 1978; minister to the Unitarian Universalist Church of Buffalo, NY from 1978 to 1983; minister to The Great Meeting (Unitarian) of Leicester, UK from 1983 to 1987; minister to the Old Meetinghouse (Unitarian), Bessells Green of Kent, UK and the Maidstone Unitarian Church of Kent, UK from 1987 to 1992; and minister to the Unitarian Universalist Church of Tarpon Springs, FL from 1992 to 1997. Rev. Pruce was quite active within the denomination throughout his thirty-nine years of ministry. He served various committees and organizations throughout his time in the United Kingdom, including the Unitarian Ministers Association and the Unitarian Commission on Society and the Family. In the United States, he served as secretary of the St. Lawrence District Chapter of the Unitarian Universalist Ministers Association from 1975 to 1980; and moderator of the Arlington Street Unitarian Universalist Church from 1969 to 1970. Prior to entering the ministry, Glyn served as a British Merchant Marine. He enlisted in 1945, and his ship was headed toward the Pacific Theatre battles at the time the Japanese surrendered. He

Page 31 UUMA Annual Review Year of 2015 And We Remember... spent the next three years traveling with the Marines throughout China and India, and the impact of seeing human suffering in those countries led him to the ministry. Glyn taught sociology at Northeastern University, in Boston, MA, and took part in a doctoral program in the Sociology of Education at Boston University. He worked on the Boston’s Redevelopment Authority, and was an avid reader and World War II history buff. He loved classical music, traveling and spending time with his granddaughter, whom he affectionately called “Mistress Eden Willow." Glyn’s, son, Timothy, recalls that Eden was his “pride and joy, and the love of his life.” Glyn is survived by his son, Timothy Pruce (Lorna Pruce); granddaughter, Eden Pruce; companion, Constance Traycheff, and her family; stepchildren, Susan, Robert, Michael and their families; as well as numerous nieces and nephews. Notes of condolences may be sent to Timothy Pruce and Family, 157-10 Riverside Drive West, Apt. 14Q, New York, NY 10032, and to Constance Traycheff, 2664 Pine Ridge Way South, Apt. D1, Palm Harbor, FL 34684.

Rev. Orloff Wakefield Miller died on July 1st, 2015 at the age of 83. Orloff was born on August 8, 1931 to Rev. Lawrence Miller and Alice Miller. He received a Bachelor of Arts from Mount Union College (now University of Mount Union) in 1953, and went on to receive a Master of Divinity from Boston University School of Theology in 1956. Rev. Miller was ordained by the Methodist Church in 1954, and served as minister to the Federated Church of Francestown, NH (Congregational) from 1956 to 1959. In 1959, he left the Methodist denomination and began serving as Associate Director of the youth organization, Liberal Religious Youth (LRY). He held that position until 1961. He received Unitarian Universalist ministerial fellowship in 1961, and spent the next five years serving as the Director of the Office of College Centers of the Unitarian Universalist Association (UUA), and Staff Advisor to Student Religious Liberals. He went on to serve as District Executive of the Mountain Desert District of the UUA from 1967 to 1970; minister to the All Souls Church Unitarian Universalist of Colorado Springs, CO from 1968 to 1972; and minister to the Unitarian Universalist Fellowship of San Luis Obispo, CA from 1973 to 1979. In 1984, he was called to respond to the national AIDS crisis. He served as minister and AIDS consultant to the UU AIDS Crisis Ministry in San Francisco, CA, a role he held for five years. Rev. Miller officially retired in 1991; however he served as European Unitarian Universalist (EUU) Minister-at-Large from 1993 to 2000. In 2000, he was accorded the title of Emeritus EUU Minister- at-Large. A tireless advocate for civil rights, Rev. Miller was among the hundreds of religious leaders who traveled to Selma, AL, in March of 1965, in answer to an appeal from Rev. Martin Luther King Jr. The appeal was put forth after a group of African-Americans, advocating for their right to vote by marching from Selma to Montgomery, were attacked by a group of white state troopers. While in

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Selma, on March 9, 1965, Rev. Miller, Rev. James Reeb and Rev. Clark Olsen, were attacked and beaten by a group of white men as they left Walker’s Cafe. Rev. Reeb died two days later. The attack gained nationwide attention, and served as one turning point in civil rights history. Several months later, in August of 1965, President Johnson signed the Voting Rights Act, banning racial discrimination within voting practices by federal, local and state governments. Within an interview gathered as part of Eyes on the Prize: America's Civil Rights Years (1954-1965), Rev. Miller explained: I've been asked many times what business white clergy had in Selma, Alabama. What right did we have telling folks how they should run their lives. We not only had a right, we had a responsibility to be there because some of our family, our black brothers and sisters were not being treated fairly and wherever people are not being given their fair shot at having a full and meaningful life we have a responsibility to do what we can to help change that. And if it means we have to argue with other brothers and sisters about that then we better get in there and argue about it. And help them to see that there is another way of living as one human family. Yes, I think white people had a responsibility, and white ministers especially had a responsibility to be in Selma, Alabama. [i] In March of 2015, Rev. Miller returned to Selma to commemorate the fiftieth anniversary of the Selma to Montgomery march. His son, Orloff Garrik Miller, recalls, “By then [his] sense of balance was a problem, and we rented a wheelchair for the conference. The day of the reenactment of the march, [he] got up and walked across that bridge.” Rev. Miller was active within the Unitarian Universalist Ministers Association; the Unitarian Universalist Service Committee; and the UUA’s (former) Full Recognition and Funding of Black Affairs Council. Orloff studied within a doctorate program at the Institute for the Advanced Human Sexuality, in San Francisco, CA, in the early 1980’s, working toward a degree in Human Sexuality. When the AIDS crisis hit the United States, he felt a responsibility to respond. He worked as a Field Secretary for the AIDS Interfaith Network, and ministered as a volunteer hospice coordinator, providing support to people with AIDS, and to their friends and families. His son, Orloff Garrik Miller, “believe[s] that this was the hardest work of Dad’s career. Few he assisted survived more than a few months.” He received the Pacific Central District’s Unsung Hero Award in 1987 for his work during the epidemic. Orloff Garrik Miller, son, has fond memories of a childhood spent with his father; together they camped, sailed, motorcycled, and traveled to regional retreats and encounter groups. In the early 1980’s, Orloff and Orloff Garrik loaded a motorcycle with camping gear and rode from San Francisco to Oregon. Orloff moved to Germany in 1989, and married his dear wife, Renate Bauer, the same year. Their son, Glenn Erasmus Bauer, was born a year later. Orloff spent the next twenty-six years enjoying his retirement, volunteering, traveling, and taking care of Glenn Erasmus. Renate remembers the ease with which Orloff made friends, and connected with individuals. “He

Page 33 UUMA Annual Review Year of 2015 And We Remember... found a way to bond with practically everyone,” she recalls, “He was dedicated to people, even at the end of his life. Even when he was not doing very well during the past two years, he made a point to call those who were worse off.” Orloff is survived by his wife, Renate Bauer; his sisters, Karen and Sandra; and his children, Orloff Garrik Miller, Tanya Crete, and Glenn Erasmus Bauer. In lieu of flowers, donations may be made to the Unitarian Universalist Service Committee, 689 Massachusetts Avenue, Cambridge, MA 02139-3302 (http://www.uusc.org/). [i]: Interview with Rev. Orloff Miller, conducted by Blackside, Inc. on November 30, 1985, for Eyes on the Prize: America's Civil Rights Years (1954-1965). Washington University Libraries, Film and Media Archive, Henry Hampton Collection.

The Rev. Christina (Chris) M. Neilson died on July 9, 2015 at the age of 57. Chris was born on April 8, 1958, in French Lake, MN, to Clifford and Beryl Walberg. Chris received a Bachelor of Arts from St. Cloud University in 1981; a Bachelor of Science in Nursing from Samuel Merritt College of Nursing in 1988; and a Master of Divinity from Starr King School for the Ministry in 2001. Rev. Neilson was ordained to the ministry in Berea, OH on October 20, 2002. She was subsequently called to serve as minister to the SouthWest Unitarian Universalist Church of North Royalton, OH. She served the church for ten years, and was instrumental in helping them purchase their first building in 2009. She went on to serve as Congregational Life Consultant to the Central East Region of the Unitarian Universalist Association, a position that she held from 2012 to 2015. Rev. Neilson was committed to bettering the denomination and the world at large. She served as Chapter Leader of the Unitarian Universalist Ministers Association’s Ohio-Meadville UUMA Chapter (OMDUUMA) from 2008 to 2012; and as Commissioned Lay Leader Committee Chair from 2008 to 2012. She was an advocate for both social justice and LGBT rights, and was heavily involved with both causes. Additionally, she was a strong believer in economic justice and worked to eradicate poverty and homelessness within Cleveland, OH. Chris never forgot her working class values. Her first job was in the cafeteria at her grammar school in Annandale, MN. Prior to entering the ministry, Chris worked for ten years as a hematology and oncology bone marrow transplant nurse at Alta Bates Hospital in Berkeley, CA. She was a member of the Nurses Union, and worked to improve services and increase systemic support of patient care. She worked all her life, except for one year in Berkeley, CA, during which she prepared for her meeting with the Ministerial Fellowship Committee (MFC). Chris enjoyed participating in theatre, and was active within Saint Cloud State University Theatre, Paul Bunyan Playhouse, and Theatre L'Homme Dieu where she did stage-managing, lights, and directing. Chris also enjoyed going to the theatre in both Cleveland and Rochester. She recently saw

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Pippen, and had tickets for a mid-April production of Kinky Boots. Chris embraced adventure through sailing, flying a small plane, parachuting, snorkeling, and more recently, traveling to Hawaii. She said that going on a riverboat cruise in 2012, from Paris to the Normandy beaches, was the favorite of her travels. Chris loved cooking and entertaining. She completed a course at the culinary school at Lake Canandaigua, NY and was looking forward to taking more courses as well as traveling to Norway, Alaska, and returning to Hawaii. Chris was devoted to her family and passionate about Unitarian Universalism. In her last reflection, recorded at 4 A.M. the day before she died, Chris said: “I feel really good about my life. I feel really good about my friends and family. I thank everyone for your help and I feel like I've had a long and successful life. My last job was working for the UUA, my hope for our future.” She is preceded in death by her mother, Beryl Walberg; and her infant daughter, Amanda. She is survived by her wife, Sharon Hoyenga; father, Clifford Walberg; brother, Mike Walberg; sister, Terri Walberg; niece, Samantha; nephews, Cory and Chad; and many friends and colleagues. In lieu of flowers, donations may be made to the Wilmot Cancer Institute at Strong Memorial Hospital, 601 Elmwood Ave, Rochester, NY 14642. Notes of condolences may be sent to Sharon Hoyenga, 64 Hidden Valley Road, Rochester, NY 14624.

The Rev. Christine E. Hillman died on August 7, 2015 at the age of 65. Christine was born on September 29, 1949 in Kokomo, IN, to Melba and Eugene Morr. She graduated with a Bachelor of Science in Education from Indiana University in 1971; a Master of Arts in Religious Studies from the University of Detroit in 1989; and a Master of Divinity from Meadville Lombard Theological School in 2000. Rev. Hillman was ordained by the Birmingham Unitarian Church of Bloomfield Hills, MI and the Unitarian Universalist Church of Olinda, Ontario, in June of 2001. Christine served as summer minister to the First Unitarian Church of Rochester, NY during the summer of 2000, and went on to serve a rich and meaningful pastorate as minister to the Unitarian Universalist Church of Olinda, Ontario, from 2001 until her death. Prior to entering the ministry, Christine worked as a religious education professional. She served as Director of Religious Education (DRE) to the Unitarian Universalist Church of Farmington, MI from 1983 to 1986; and co-interim DRE to the Birmingham Unitarian Church of Bloomfield Hills, MI from 1986 to 1987. After graduating from the University of Detroit, she taught at the university for ten years as an adjunct professor of Religious Studies. Rev. Hillman participated in many denominational activities. She led and co-led several Unitarian Universalist Association (UUA) Renaissance Modules, including History and Philosophy; served on the former Unitarian Universalist District of Michigan (UUDOM) Religious Education Committee; held membership with the Liberal Religious Educators Association (LREDA); served as co-leader of

Page 35 UUMA Annual Review Year of 2015 And We Remember... the UUA Long Range Planning Program; held membership with the Unitarian Universalist Ministers of Canada Chapter of the Unitarian Universalist Ministers Association; and participated in Train-the -Teacher for the women honoring adult religious education curriculum, Cakes for the Queen of Heaven. She served as chair of the Canadian Unitarian Council’s Theological Education Funds Committee from approximately 2005 to 2010, and was honored to hold that position. From 2007 to 2010, Christine served as a board member of the Canadian Unitarian Council Board of Trustees; and she served on the Leamington District Memorial Hospital Pastoral Committee until her death. Christine first heard about Unitarian Universalism from her college roommate, and attended a service five years later, with her husband, Arthur. Christine and Arthur were living in Kokomo, IN at the time and the closest Unitarian Universalist congregation was located fifty miles from their home. They decided to take matters into their own hands. In 1975, along with ten other people, Christine and Arthur helped to organize and establish the Unitarian Universalist Fellowship of Kokomo, IN. Prior to entering the ministry, in the 1970’s, Christine started a women’s support group designed to enhance and increase the amount of information provided to women; promote examination of women’s rights; and lead women toward feminist ideals. The group came to be known as Women in Religion. Throughout her life, Christine advocated for equal pay and opportunity for all, and stood as a strong proponent of social justice. Christine is remembered lovingly by family, friends and colleagues. Arthur Hillman explains, “I think that the people who come to Christine’s memorial service and listen to what is said about her will think that she was ten feet tall. In reality, she was much taller than that.” Christine is survived by her beloved husband, Arthur Hillman; loving daughters, Courtney (Derrick), Lee, and Blythe Wood; cherished granddaughters, Kaylee and Anaka Wood; dear sisters, Anne Morr and Susan Bienz; and many nieces and nephews. Memorials appreciated to the Unitarian Universalist Association Living Tradition Fund, PO Box 843154, Boston, MA 02284-3154 or to Christine’s daughters, C/O Lynch & Sons Funeral Directors, 1368 N. Crooks Road, Clawson, MI 48017. Notes of condolences may be sent to Arthur Hillman, 2847 Rossmoor Circle, Bloomfield Hills, MI 48302.

Rev. Dr. John Alexie “Lex” Crane died on August 7, 2015 at the age of 93. Lex was born in Baltimore, MD on January 14, 1922 to John A. and Minnie E. Crane. He graduated from the Baltimore Polytechnic Institute in 1939, and served in the U.S. Army in the South Pacific and Europe from 1942 to 1945. He was severely wounded during the Battle of the Bulge. He went on to receive a Bachelor of Arts in English in 1949 and a Master of Arts in Creative Writing in 1950 from Johns Hopkins University; a Master of Divinity from Starr King School for the Ministry in 1951; and a Master of Arts in Social Psychology from the University of California in 1971.

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Rev. Crane was ordained by the First Unitarian Church in Vancouver, BC in 1952 and served thirty- six years in parish ministry. He served as called minister to the Unitarian Church of Vancouver from 1951 to 1955; the Unitarian Universalist Community Church of Park Forest, IL from 1955 to 1958; the Unitarian Society of Santa Barbara, CA from 1958 to 1977; and the Jefferson Unitarian Church of Golden, CO from 1977 to 1981. He went on to serve as the Director of Ministerial Education for the Unitarian Universalist Association from 1981 to 1983. He was next called to the Unitarian Universalist Church of Yakima, WA and served there until his retirement in 1987, upon which he was voted Minister Emeritus. He spent the next fifteen years serving various interim ministries in Southern California. In 2002, he was voted Minister Emeritus to the Unitarian Society of Santa Barbara. Lex involved himself with many denominational organizations and activities. He served three terms on the Executive Board of the Unitarian Universalist Ministers Association (UUMA) - 1963 to 1965, 1973 to 1975 and 1991 to 1992. His passion for ministerial mentoring deepened throughout his time on the board. He served as UUMA Newsletter Editor from 1963 to 1965; member of the Board of Trustees for the Starr King School for the Ministry from 1968 to 1974; faculty of the NorthWest Unitarian Leadership School from 1984 to 1987; and staff of the Unitarian Universalist Leadership School from 1993 to 1995. In 2008, he was awarded the Unitarian Universalist Retired Ministers and Partners Association’s Annual Creative Sage-ing Award. Outside of the denomination, Lex was involved in numerous social service and progressive political and religious organizations. In the early 1960’s, Lex’s sermon exposing the activities of the John Birch Society in Santa Barbara was spread nationwide by the Associated Press and CBS-TV, contributing to the crippling of the Society across the country. For his role, Lex was awarded an honorary doctorate from Starr King. Lex became a licensed California Marriage and Family Counselor in 1971. He authored several publications including the booklet “Developing an Extended Family Program” (1972); the books Keeping in Touch: Self, Sex and Society (1975); Love, Sex and the Human Condition: Getting a Life (2006); A New Perspective on the Philosophy of UU Religion (2008); To the Best of My Recollection…a memoir (2012) as well as numerous articles and scholarly papers. Between interim ministries, Lex and his wife, Ginny, traveled throughout the world. They ventured to Europe, Asia, Australia, New Zealand, and Canada. Most notable of those travels was a semester abroad with Santa Barbara City College to China in 1989. They were witness to the student protests at Tiananmen Square in Beijing. Lex was a voracious reader and a talented writer. His children fondly remember his intelligence; his son, Jack, wrote: "He developed a love of study, stayed abreast of thinking in literature, the arts, liberal theology, philosophy, and social sciences. This passion coupled with his oratorical skills, made Lex unusually able to communicate the big ideas to folk who didn't have the leisure or luxury of regular study." Lex is survived by his wife Virginia Lee Crane, his sons John Crane III (Jack), and Douglas L. Crane

Page 37 UUMA Annual Review Year of 2015 And We Remember... married to Lisa Babashoff, his step-daughter Claire Beery married to William Haigwood, his step-son Evan Blickenstaff, and his step-son Eric Blickenstaff married to Cynthia Kasabian. He is also survived by grandchildren Molly and Allie; Alex and Kirra; Willow, Mira and Zoë; John and Alex; and two great-grandchildren. Lex was preceded in death by his son David L. Crane. Contributions in Lex’s memory may be made to Unitarian Society of Santa Barbara, 1535 Santa Barbara St., Santa Barbara, CA 93101. Notes of condolences may be sent to Virginia (Ginny) Crane, 1038 B Calle Sastre, Santa Barbara, CA 93105.

The Rev. Terry Mark Burke died on August 15, 2015 at the age of 61. Terry was born in Flint, Michigan to Jack and Virginia Burke, on November 12, 1953. He received a Bachelor of Arts from Harvard College in 1975 and a Master of Divinity from Harvard Divinity School in 1982. Rev. Burke was ordained by the Universalist Church of New York, NY in 1982. He was hired to serve as Extension Minister to the First Church in Jamaica Plain, Unitarian Universalist, of Jamaica Plain, MA, in 1983. Two years later, in 1985, the congregation called him as their full-time, settled minister. He held that position until his retirement in 2014; marking 31 years of service to First Church. Rev. Burke served on the Mass Bay District (MBD) Board from 1983 to 1985; The MBD Extension Committee from 1983 to 1986; and served as the President of the Unitarian Universalist Christian Fellowship from 1987 to 1989. He helped organize the AIDS service of Memory and Hope at the Unitarian Universalist Association (UUA) General Assembly in 1991; served on the Massachusetts Council of Churches Board from 1988 to 1990; as the UUA’s official observer to National Council of Churches from 1990 to 1996; and as a Ferry Beach Minister in Residence in 1990. In his later years, Terry served as head of the Boston Ministers’ Club Nominating Committee. During his pastorate at First Church, Rev. Burke revitalized the congregation through the renovation of their building, the development of an RE program, and the planning and execution of a capital campaign for accessibility. He worked alongside his dear wife, Ellen McGuire, who was hired as the congregation’s organist and music director in 1979, and continues to serve as such today. After retirement, Terry assisted clergy at Trinity Episcopal Church in Canton, MA. Terry was involved in a variety of Jamaica Plain community activities including the Multicultural Arts Center; Concerned Clergy of the Corridor; Council of Churches; JP Workforce; various environmental organizations; Jobs for Justice; Interfaith Worker Justice; and the Samaritans, where he served as a phone volunteer. Terry loved to travel. He visited El Salvador and Nicaragua in the 1980’s; studied icons and the

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Orthodox Church in St. Petersburg, Istanbul, the Sinai and Venice; walked the Camino in 2012 with his daughter, Amelia; and visited Jerusalem twice to meet with religious leaders working for peace. Terry’s friend and former roommate, acclaimed writer and former correspondent Chris Hedges, delivered a eulogy at Terry’s funeral. He spoke of Terry as a friend, father, and minister, and discussed the Burke’s service to First Church. Chris wrote: “Terry and Ellen—she played the organ and handled the music—have given 31 years of their lives to this church. They have been here on Sundays. They have presided over weddings, baptisms, funerals, church suppers, retreats, Sunday school, Christmas pageants and the blessing of the animals, including the stuffed animals. They made this church a real church, where all—trans and straight, men and women, from those who were healthy to those struggling with HIV, from black to brown to Asian to white, from the disabled to the abled, from the young to the old, the well-off to the destitute, the sober and those trying to become sober—found respect, reassurance and community. The remarkable intertwining of the lives of Ellen and Terry to create a thing of beauty, a thing we cannot see or touch but can only feel and sense, is what ministry is about. If there is a more meaningful way to spend a life I do not know it.” Terry is survived by his wife, Ellen McGuire; brother, Tim (Cindy); three daughters, Willow (Laura Hughes), Amelia, and Lucyanna; and many close friends. Donations in Terry's memory may be made to Samaritans (Samaritans) or to Jobs with Justice (Jobs With Justice). Notes of condolences may be sent to Ellen McGuire, 16 Rosecliff St, Roslindale, MA 02131-3525.

The Rev. Matthew McNaught died on August 23, 2015 at the age of 77. Matthew was born in Glasgow, Scotland on November 15, 1937. He received a Bachelor of Arts from Oxford University in 1962 and a Master of Arts from Oxford University in 1967. He graduated with a Diploma in Theology from Wells Theological College of England in 1964; and studied at Meadville Lombard Theological School in the early 1970’s. Rev. McNaught was first ordained as an Episcopalian minister in 1964. He left the Episcopal ministry in 1971, and was fellowshipped as a Unitarian Universalist minister in 1972. He was called to serve as interim minister to the Redhill Universalist Church of Clinton, NC in 1972, and he held that position for one year. Rev. McNaught was ordained by the Community Church Unitarian Universalist of New Orleans, LA in 1973, and went on to serve as their minister from 1973 to 1979; minister to the First Unitarian Church of Austin, TX from 1979 to 1988; and minister to the Towson Unitarian Universalist Church of Lutherville, MD from 1988 to 1998. The Towson UU Church named Rev. McNaught Minister Emeritus in 1998. He went on to serve interim ministries at the Unitarian Universalist Church of Fort Lauderdale, FL from 1998 to 1999; King’s Chapel of Boston, MA from 1999 to 2001; the Unitarian Society of Germantown of Philadelphia, PA from 2001 to 2002;

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Unitarian Universalists of the Chester River of Chestertown, MD from 2002 to 2004; and the Unitarian Universalist Congregation of Sterling, VA from 2005 to 2007. Rev. McNaught was involved with the denomination in various capacities. He served as Program Director of the Southwest Unitarian Universalist Summer Institute in 1979; Secretary of the Southwest Unitarian Universalist Ministers Association in 1981; President of the Southwest Minister’s Association from 1982 to 1983; Member of the Denominational Committee on Continuing Education for the Ministry in 1988; and Minister in Residence at the 1993 Star Island Arts Conference. Matthew served as examining chaplain to the Bishop of Pittsburg from 1970 to 1971; as a Field Consultant with the St. Louis Educational Center from 1972 to 1978. He did chaplaincy work at the Orleans Parish Prison from 1977 to 1978 and at the Bastrop Federal Corrections Institution from 1983 to 1986. He served as the Unit Chair of the League of Women Voters from 1977 to 1979; and Chair of the Community Advisory Councils for New Orleans Public Schools in 1979. During his time in Maryland, Matthew served as President of the Maryland CRC and President of the Towson Ministers Association. He was involved with Maryland Against Handguns and co-founded the Maryland Interfaith Conference on Affordable Housing. Matthew was passionate about Adult Religious Education and he helped build strong and vibrant programs within the congregations that he served. In the late 1990’s, he lectured at John Hopkins University on “The History of Liberal Protestantism”; and on “The Interface of Religion and Psychology.” He led seminars on “The Quest of Historical Jesus,” “The Theology of Soren Kierkegaard” and many others. Matthew is survived by his wife, Anna Bennett McNaught; and his son, Mark Bennett McNaught. In lieu of flowers, contributions may be made to Smile Train, an international children’s charity that offers cleft lip and palate surgery to children in developing countries. The organization has empowered local doctors in 85+ developing countries to provide 100%-free cleft repair surgery in their communities. Notes of condolences may be sent to Anna McNaught, 742 E Lake Ave, Baltimore, MD, 21212; or to Mark McNaught, 15 Residence Jean-Baptiste de la Salle, 35000 Rennes, France.

The Rev. Maurice W. Cobb died on September 10, 2015 at the age of 97. Maurice was born to Richard Cobb and Lelia Lampson Cobb on March 4, 1918. He received a Bachelor of Sacred Theology from Crane Theological School in 1943; and a Master of Arts in philosophy from the University of North Carolina in 1953. Rev. Cobb was ordained to the ministry in 1943 by All Souls Universalist Church in East Boston, MA. In 1944, he was called to serve the triangulated churches of Clinton, Red Hill, and Hopewell, NC, and he served the three until 1948. He ministered to Derby Line, VT from 1949 to 1953; Attica-Belleville,

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OH from 1953 to 1956; and Dolgeville and Salisbury Center, NY from 1956 to 1964. He spent the next twelve years serving as minister to the First Universalist Church in Brunswick, ME. He then served as minister-at-large to the First Unitarian Church of New Bedford, MA from 1976 to 1979, and assistant minister and religious education director to First Parish Unitarian in Billerica, MA from 1979 to 1983, at which point he retired from active ministry. He was named Minister Emeritus of the First Parish in Billerica in 1983. From 1998 to 2000, he ministered part time to the UU Church of Sanford, ME, and he was named Minister Emeritus of the church in 1999. During Rev. Cobb’s twelve year ministry in Brunswick, he shared his passion for social action with the congregation. He helped create relationships between the church and local community organizations, several of which he founded. Such organizations included, but were not limited to, a suicide prevention program, the Bath Brunswick Food Co-op, and an Amnesty International group. Upon moving to Massachusetts, he served as a member of the Children’s Protective Services Board; North End Onboard; New Bedford Onboard; and the New Bedford Council on Addiction. After his 1983 retirement, Maurice kept quite busy, discovering new interests and tending to old ones. He remained active in social justice organizations and served Amnesty International, Peace Action Maine, and AARP, among others. Maurice took a house design and construction course at the Shelter Institute and used his skills to build a house in West Newfield, ME. He loved his house, and enjoyed a thirty year retirement there. Vegetable gardening, traveling to visit family, letter writing, and the Red Sox, were some of his pleasures. Maurice’s dear friend, Martha Gottlieb, explains, “The essential spirit of this man, as I see it, is of tolerance and deep compassion. Christian, you might say, though his theology was nuanced.” Of Maurice’s ministry, Martha wrote: “During those years in Brunswick if one wanted access to help or services that were hard to come by, Maurice was considered to be the one with the cosmic connection. He worked with those who back then were not well served by the system. Up until the day of his death he was aware that they are still with us, and they were in his thoughts.” Maurice is survived by his loving and close friend of 40 years, Martha Gottlieb; brother, Lawrence Cobb; nieces, Llynda Bigalow and Susan Engle; nephew, Richard Cobb; nine great nieces and nephews; several great-great nephews; and a host of long-time friends. In lieu of flowers, donations may be sent to the charity of your choosing. Notes of condolences may be sent to Maurice's brother, Lawrence R.Cobb, 77 Cedar Ridge Dr., Shelburne, VT, 05482; Maurice's niece, Llynda C. Bigalow, 77 Cedar Ridge Dr., Shelburne, VT, 05482; and to Martha Gottlieb, 93 Head Tide Road, Whitefield, ME. 04353.

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The Rev. Daniel Joseph Kane died at home in the arms of his husband on Tuesday, October 6, 2015, at the age of 55. Daniel was born on December 24, 1959 to James Edward Kane and Nancy Rita Lake Kane. He received a Bachelor of Arts from George Washington University in 1981; a Juris Doctor from University of California, Hastings College of the Law in 1988; and a Master of Divinity from Starr King School for the Ministry in 2008. Rev. Kane was ordained by the Arlington Street Church of Boston, MA on March 22, 2009. He was called to serve as the Interim Assistant to the Minister at Arlington Street Church from 2008 to 2009. He served as the consulting minister to the Unitarian Universalist Community of Lake County, of Kelseyville, CA, from 2011 to 2013; as Acting President of the Starr King Graduates Association from 2014 to 2015; and as a member of the Starr King Board of Trustees from 2014 to 2015. Dan volunteered as a child and adult literacy tutor; a pro bono attorney for many organizations including the AIDS Legal Referral Panel; and a supply Protestant chaplain at Napa State Hospital, CA. Prior to entering the ministry, Dan practiced as a litigation attorney in Oakland, CA and taught legal writing and research to law students. Dan and his husband, Darin, joined the Unitarian Church in Oakland in 1995, and Dan became involved with almost every aspect congregational life, including teaching religious education. Dan gave up professional pursuits to take on his most important work as a stay-at-home dad—to which he was devoted and he considered the best work of his life. He managed the care of their infant boys and primary school-aged daughter with patience, undying love, and grace. He loved to travel and together, he and Darin visited many parts of the world and more than half of the U.S. states. He particularly loved Pacific Islands and his family plans to scatter his ashes on one next year. Reading (children’s and adult literature), cooking and eating, and keeping a home and garden along side Darin were all passions of Dan’s. Of Dan, Darin writes: “Dan was a bright light in the lives of many. He touched countless people with his compassionate, generous and loving spirit. He will be mourned and missed by his entire family, his many friends and all the people he touched through his ministry and the way he lived his life.” Dan is survived by his husband of twenty-two years, Darin Mikail Jensen and their children Ella James Jensen-Kane, Jack Thomas Jensen-Kane, Maxwell Josiah Jensen-Kane. He is also survived by his sister, Teresa Kane Rennia (Jeff Rennia); father-in-law, Bryant Jensen (Joan Levy); sister-in-law, Andrea Truly Jensen; brother-in-law, Steven Jensen (Gabrielle Savage); and numerous nieces and nephews, and best friends Joan Haratani, Thomas Daniels, and Russ Morgan, as well as the family’s Oakland Brown Dog, Fiona. He is predeceased by his parents, James Edward Kane and Nancy Rita Lake Kane, his mother-in-law, De Ane Cooper Jensen, and brothers-in-law Creyton Jensen and Todd Jensen.

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In lieu of flowers, please make donations to Our Family Coalition http://www.ourfamily.org/, an organization that seeks to create an inclusive and just world where all LGBTQ families with children have visibility and opportunities to thrive as valued participants in our schools, institutions, and communities. Condolences may be sent to the family at 4712 Davenport Avenue, Oakland, CA 94619.

The Rev. Rosemarie Carnarius died on October 10, 2015 at the age of 76. Rosemarie was born on November 27, 1938 to Karl Schnabel and Hilda Gertrud Barth, in Leipzig, Germany. She graduated with an Associate of Arts degree from Bucks County Community College in 1984; and with a Master of Divinity from Starr King School for the Ministry in 1991. Rev. Carnarius was ordained by the Monterey Peninsula Unitarian Church of Carmel, CA in 1992. She embarked on a two month lecture series throughout Germany in September 1992, at the invitation of the German Unitarians, and she preached at over 40 locations. She went on to serve as the Interim Minister to the Unitarian Universalist Church of Cheyenne, WY from 1993 to 1994; Minister of the Unitarian Universalist Church of Las Cruces, NM from 1994 to 1996; and Minister in Association at the Unitarian Universalist Church of Tucson, AZ from 1999 to 2002. Rosemarie was born in Germany during a time of ruthless injustice and immeasurable tragedy. She was six years old when World War II ended, and fearing that she might be caught for political action against the communists, she escaped to West Germany at the age of seventeen. A deep thinker since childhood, Rosemarie’s early life experiences helped shape her ministry and writing. Rosemarie was strongly committed to human rights, self-determination and peace with justice. She was actively involved with Unitarian Universalists for Justice in the Middle East, and in the aftermath of September 11th, 2001, she started a dialogue group called Inside Out, focused especially on the tragic conditions in the Middle East. In addition, she held membership with various organizations: the Mountain Desert District Chapter of the Unitarian Universalist Ministers Association; International Association for Religious Freedom; Amnesty International; Bay Area Friends of Tibet; and The Northern Cheyenne Ministerial Association. Rosemarie saw writing as her mission and purpose in life. Due to many complications from her hip surgery, Rosemarie’s ministerial career was cut short. Housebound by the complications, Rosemarie authored over a dozen publications. She was moved by the events of September 11, 2001, and subsequently authored five nonfiction books “on the urgency for personal and societal transformation”. Other published works included five volumes of poetry, two sermons, and Toward a Psychology of Wholeness - a Synthesis of the Knowledge of Modern Science and the Insights of the Mystics. Rosemarie is remembered lovingly by her dear partner, Aston Bloom. Aston described Rosemarie as

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“thoughtful,” “humble,” and “one who was constantly thinking of others, even when she was dying.” Aston recalled a moment two weeks before Rosemarie’s death, during which Rosemarie noticed that Aston hadn’t been eating well, and sat her down to prepare a week’s worth of sample menus. Aston mused, “She never realized how special she was…I was her caregiver, and she was mine.” She is survived by her long-time partner, Aston Bloom; son, Michael (Karla); daughter, Patricia (Brad); grandchildren, Ian Christopher, Kristen, Nicole, Michael and Lesley; sister, Karin (Rolf); nephews, nieces, and other relatives in Germany; as well as dear friends in both the United States and abroad. In lieu of flowers, donations in honor of Rosemarie’s life and work can be made to ANERA - American Near East Refugee Aid, 1111 14th St. NW, #400, Washington, DC 22225. Condolences may be sent to Ms. Aston Bloom, [email protected] or 88 S. London Station Road, Tucson, AZ 85748.

The Rev. Kenneth “Ken” G. LaFleur died on December 5, 2015 at the age of 81. Ken was born on December 14, 1933, to Daniel LaFleur and Louise Pelletier LaFleur. Ken received a Bachelor of Arts from the University of Maine in 1961; a Bachelor of Divinity from Bangor Theological Seminary in 1961 (later granted as a Master of Divinity) and a Master of Arts from Brandeis University in 1970. Rev. LaFleur was ordained by the First Parish Unitarian Church of Castine, ME (now Unitarian Universalist Congregation of Castine) in 1954. He was called to the Castine congregation in 1954 and he served there from 1954 to 1958, and then again, for one year, in 1961. From 1958 to 1960, he also served as minister to First Parish in Northborough, MA. Ken served the First Parish in Wayland, MA from 1962 to 1969 and the First Universalist Church of Norway, ME and South Paris, ME from 1970 to 1972. He embarked on a thirteen year ministry in 1972, after being called to First Parish in Hingham, MA, Unitarian Universalist, known as Old Ship Church. Ken was voted Minister Emeritus of Old Ship Church in 1985. Ken held membership with the Unitarian Universalist Ministers Association (UUMA), and was actively involved with the Maine UUMA and Central MA UUMA districts during the 1950’s, 1960’s, and 1970’s. After his retirement from full time ministry, Ken taught history at Northeastern University in Boston, MA; served as the organist of two churches; helped found the AIDS support group of central Maine; wrote a weekly column for a central Maine newspaper; and served as part-time minister to All Souls Universalist Church of Oakland, ME. Current minister of Old Ship Church, and direct successor of Rev. LaFleur, Rev. Ken Read-Brown, spoke highly of Rev. LaFleur’s time at Old Ship. Rev. Read-Brown wrote: “Ken's thirteen year ministry here at Old Ship was a time of healing and strengthening for our

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congregation; his ministry truly did make our congregation's shared ministry during more recent years possible. Ken was, not incidentally, one of the finest preachers in our or any denomination. But even more importantly, he was a fine, good, and gentle man.” Ken is survived by his beloved wife of 54 years, Helen Myrick LaFleur; daughter, Margaret LaFleur Asadoorian; sister-in-law Deborah Myrick Martin; several nieces and nephews; and many other family and friends. Notes of condolences may be sent to Helen LaFleur, P.O. Box 110, East Vassalboro, ME, 04935.

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“Where Leads Our Call?” UUMA Connect The Next UUMA-Wide Conversation UUMA Connect was formally launched at the Our next UUMA-wide 2014 Ministry Days. Since then, it has been a year conversation builds of growth and improvement as the Connect Team upon the success of worked to respond to feedback from members “Whose Are We?” and make improvements to the structure and and “Who Are Our content of UUMA Connect: Neighbors?”,  Our initial curators have collected over two deepening our hundred resources in the various duties of collegial relationships, ministry. and nurturing excellence in ministry while assuring the relevancy of our  A new tagging and classifying system has ministries in a rapidly changing world. been launched this month to make them easier to find and access. Together, we will explore the impacts of these changes to ministers and to the congregations  Our resource library continues to grow. If and communities they serve, examining the you have a resource you'd like to submit, implications of living our call. The UUMA simply email it to [email protected]. CENTER team reached out to Verity Jones, the  Behind the scenes improvements have Executive Director of the Center For Pastoral increased the speed and responsiveness of Excellence, to partner with us in developing the the site. program. We are inviting participants to reconnect to their "call", and more fully engage it In addition, we have added three brand-new in the world. features to UUMA Connect: This program will provide multiple opportunities The Zoom Room has been set up, so that all for our members to meet in person and online to UUMA members can use UUMA Connect as a reflect their calls and articulate how and where to platform for online meetings and discussion live those calls more fully. We imagine that work groups. (Check out connect.uuma.org/zoom- will be shared with our religious professional room to reserve the Zoom Room for your colleagues and the people we serve as well. meeting!) After being trained this July, our team of This spring, UUMA Connect has been hosting a facilitators will be prepared to launch this next series of Ministry Meditations. Check out our conversation in regions, chapters and clusters growing library of short spoken words of insight this fall. If you are interested in scheduling a and encouragement from your colleagues—and "Where Leads Our Call?" session (6-12 hours in submit your own by emailing [email protected]. length) contact Don Southworth at We are in the process of introducing the UUMA [email protected]. Connect Wikis: crowd-sourced compilations of the wisdom of all of us on any subject of interest to ministers. What do you want to know more about? Start a wiki-page on that subject. Look over the wiki pages and contribute your knowledge in that area.

Page 46 UUMA AnnualUUMA Review Annual Review Year of 2015 UUMA CENTER News (2015-2016) UUMA CENTER News (2015-2016) Beyond the Call Coaching We successfully completed Beyond the Call I The UUMA is in the midst of its third year of the (Preaching and Worship Arts) in August 2014. As Coaching program. This program has been a a way of spreading the contagiously positive great success with several of the original learning about Preaching and Worship Arts, our “coachees” coming back to be trained as coaches. BTC I students led 11 small groups via We are currently accepting applications for videoconferencing with UUMA members around UUMA members in the final fellowship who are the world for one year ending in early 2015. Many interesting in getting a coach, deadline is August BTC I students are also serving as UUMA peer 15, 2015. The online application to request a coaches. coach can be found on the UUMA website. In January of 2015 we launched Beyond the Call A coach helps a minister to dive into a II: Entrepreneurial Ministry. The UUMA/UUA particularly challenging area of ministry, or to have collaborated on this program with business hone specific skills to take their ministry to the schools around the country and clergy who are next level. While mentoring and in-care programs engaged in innovative ministries. Twenty-six support colleagues during the start of their participants, including three ministers from the careers, the coaching program is for ministers in United Church of Christ and two rabbis from the final fellowship. Union for Reformed Judaism, began the program with the first of four retreats at Asilomar prior to Our next training for new coaches will take place the Institute for Excellence in Ministry. in Fall 2016. Check on the UUMA website in Spring 2016 for details on how to apply to be a The program includes three more retreats and in- peer coach. depth ongoing small group work. The program will end late in 2016 and many participants will be CENTER Presenters offering coaching and mentoring to colleagues after that. After each of the four retreats we are The CENTER Presenters program is being offering a 90-minute webinar which captures the transformed. Instead of providing funding for essence of each retreat (the first was on design particular presenters, we are increasing the thinking and spiritual innovation) and a time to subsidy for all chapters to use as they see fit. talk with students. We will also be offering four We will use UUMA Connect to share information sessions for people who wish to share in the about potential presenters for chapters, clusters, learning and practices of different stages of the and other small groups. The new listing will program. Six UUMA members are currently include both presenters who have been pre- studying design thinking in our first approved by the CENTER Committee, and entrepreneurial ministry series; we invite you to suggestions from UUMA Members. Watch the E- look for future opportunities to learn and practice Update for links to the new CENTER Presenters new ways to bring innovation into your ministries. library and how to add your own suggestions to In the coming year we will be assessing feasibility the list. of how/what we might offer for Beyond the Call III, which is planned to focus on social witness and multicultural immersion/practice. If you have any questions or thoughts about Beyond the Call, contact CENTER member Kent Matthies, who holds the BTC portfolio.

Page 47 UUMA Annual Review Year of 2015 UUMA CENTER News (2015-2016) Mentoring Institute for Excellence in Ministry Many of you know that to enter final fellowship Thank you to all who helped make our third UU ministers need to work with a colleague Institute for Excellence in Ministry a tremendous mentor (who is in final fellowship) for three years. success! Our time together at Asilomar this past But did you also know that the estimates for the February was rich with opportunities to learn, percentage of ministers who leave their ministries connect, play, and worship with over 400 after five years is as high as 40%? And did you colleagues and partners attending. People from know (or do know from your own experience) that several of the seminars are continuing with online having a mentor is a significant part of what helps follow-up conversations as a way of extending those who survive the often hard adjustment of and deepening the learning. A hearty thank you entering professional ministry? to those who filled out the evaluations as these The UUMA and UUA have been working together will inform the next Institute in January 2018 in to strengthen the mentoring experience for Florida. We are already kicking around some everyone. Last year, 25 Lead Mentors were trained exciting possibilities for the next Institute, on mentoring, and have been offering training to including opening registration to clergy of other chapters and clusters since last fall. The training traditions and denominations. While it would be provides tools for mentors to be more effective an amazing opportunity for partnership, it will with colleagues and with others they may mentor/ also ask us to pay even greater attention to a lead in the institutions they serve. shared covenant, communication, and how we practice and reflect on what has been called Right We don't see this as the end to our desire to focus Relationship. This will be an opportunity to and strengthen the important work of mentoring deepen our ongoing work to grow in our anti- one another, but as a beginning of being more racist, anti-oppressive, and multicultural ways of intentional as a movement about that work. We being. are hoping to begin offering mentors to anyone who is in candidate status next year. We are also We know that cost is an important factor for working on how best to integrate mentoring into those deciding on whether or not to attend the an expanded In Care system for everyone who Institute. This year there were more scholarships enters the path of ministerial formation. offered than every before, and we hope to continue that trend. WE also hope that having If you are interested in attending an in-person three years until the next Institute will give training contact your chapter leaders or send an people time to save the necessary funds. We also email to [email protected]. We are also offered, for the first time, one of our most popular launching a test on-line training this fall for those seminars on live streaming so people could learn who don't have the time or resources to attend an with colleagues at a fraction of the cost from in-person training. And lastly, we have added to home. the questions in your UUMA online profile where you can identify your willingness/availability to Lastly, there are resources from some of the mentor, plus any life experience or professional seminars available on the UUMA website, and focus that might make your mentoring more videos of the worship services can be seen at useful to a colleague. Please fill out that new http://original.livestream.com/uuma/folder. portion of your profile so that new ministers can Watch for details about the 2018 Institute and find you when they go looking for someone to opportunities to place a deposit late in 2015 or guide and support them in the tender beginnings early in 2016. of their journeys.

Page 48 UUMA AnnualUUMA Review Annual Review Year of 2015 UUMA CENTER News (2015-2016) Collegial Development Committee News In the spring of 2015, Executive Director Don Southworth invited eight colleagues from around the US and Canada to form the Collegial Development Committee (“CDC”). The mission of the CDC was to develop a strategic plan for the Association to implement and enhance the UUMA Vision Statement for Collegial Development, which reads as follows: The UUMA promotes multiple models of collegiality, gathering in covenant to meet both the shared and unique needs of our divers ministries (including retired, community, candidate, consulting, interim and parish). Shaped by a culture of vulnerability, intimacy, trust and accountability to one another, we embrace leadership and mutual learning model excellence in ministry through collegiality. The CDC met in person in September 2014 and determined that the following five areas of collegiality should be given the highest priority:  Continuing to formalize the Mentoring program and process.  Outreach to ministers from historically or currently marginalized identities.  Development of systems of accountability.  Development of leadership practices, processes and expectations.  Education of colleagues and the institutions they serve about the value of collegiality. Working in subgroups through the fall and winter of 2014/2015, the CDC developed elements of a strategic plan seeking to address each area of priority. The CDC has presented the strategic plan to the Executive Director and we will share it at the Chapter Leaders retreat in Portland and post it on the UUMA website. Over the next year, the CDC will begin working on these five priorities, as well as focusing on improving communication between UUMA leadership and local UUMA groups. A portion of the work will be devoted to collecting information and assessing needs around collegiality—stay tuned for ways to share your ideas. 2015-16 CENTER Committee 2015-16 Collegial Development Committee Lynn Gardner, co-chair Peter Friedrichs, co-chair (Central East Regional Group) Elaine Peresluha, co-chair Deborah Raible, co-chair (Western Region) Megan Cefalu Brian Kiely (Canada) Kent Matthies Claire Feingold Thoryn (New England Region) Tom Schade Ashley Horan (Mid-America Region) Darrick Jackson TBD (Southern Region) Julie Taylor Sunshine Wolfe Molly Housh Gordon

Page 49 UUMA Annual Review Year of 2015 Sustaining the Call Honorees In 2015, the following individuals and communities were appreciated or memorialized on the Sustaining the Call's Wall of Remembrance & Appreciation:  Rev. Mary Moore donated in appreciation of Rev. Charles Eddis.  Sue Magidson donated in appreciation of Revs. Barbara and Bill Hamilton-Holway.  Lydia Ferrante-Roseberry donated in appreciation of Revs. Rob and Janne Eller-Isaac.  Rev. Jim and Ms. Betty Grant donated in appreciation of “The Congregations I have served as Interim or Consulting Minister.”  Rachel K. Anderson donated in appreciation of Irving Stultz and Judith Meyer.  Rev. Neal Jones donated in appreciation of Alison Thirkield.  San Gabriel UU Fellowship & Rev. Mark Skrabacz donated in appreciation of San Gabriel UU Fellowship.  My Journey, Lilia Cuervo donated in appreciation of “Those colleagues whose loving support have eased.”  Rev. Rebecca M Bryan donated in appreciation of Rev. Carolyn Patierno.  Rev. David A. Johnson (of KS) donated in appreciation of “Rev. Judith Walker-Riggs, for 30 years’ mentoring.”  Rev. Robin Landerman Zucker donated in appreciation of Rev. Ken Sawyer.  Rev. Elizabeth A. Harding donated in appreciation of The Rev. Dr. Susann Pangerl.  Rev. Dr. V. Elaine Strawn donated in appreciation of The UU Fellowship of Wayne County.  Rev. Sian Wiltshire donated in appreciation of Rev. Gail Seavey and Rev. Jason Shelton.  Rev. Lisa Friedman donated in appreciation of Rev. Dr. Dick Gilbert.  John Cooper donated in appreciation of South Valley Unitarian Universalists.  An Anonymous Donor donated in appreciation of Rev. Fred Cappuccino.  Rev. Helen Carroll donated in appreciation of Rev. Terry Burke & Rev. Ken Reed-Brown.  An Anonymous Donor donated in appreciation of Ken Sawyer.  Rev. William Graves donated in appreciation of Rev. Leon Hopper.  Brenna and Jessica Woods donated in appreciation of Rev. Allison Palm.  Rev. David MacPherson donated in appreciation of Rev. David MacPherson.  Celeste DeRoche donated in appreciation of Rosemary Bray McNatt.

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 Florence Caplow donated in appreciation of Rev. Bruce Bode.  An Anonymous Donor donated in appreciation of Rev. Richard Gilbert.  Edward Wight donated in appreciation of Carl Scovel.  Lynne Garner donated in appreciation of Rev. Edward Searl.  Kevin Tarsa donated in appreciation of Emmy Lou Belcher.  Erin Gingrich donated in appreciation of Deborah Pope-Lance.  Laura Wagner donated in appreciation of Rev. Dr. Judith Wright.  Christopher Wulff & Ariel Hunt-Brondwik donated in appreciation of Kathy Sage.  The Rev. Dr. Andrew C. Kennedy and Lois D. Wesener donated in appreciation of The Rev. William F. Schulz.  Julica Hermann de la Fuente donated in appreciation of Sarah Moldenhauer-Salazar.  Rev. Steven A. Protzman donated in appreciation of Kendyl Gibbons.  Sarah G & Scott McNeill donated in appreciation of Rev. David Bumbaugh.  Karen Fraser Gitlitz donated in appreciation of the UU Ministers of Canada.  Charles Eddis donated in appreciation of William P. Jenkins.  Thomas Wintle donated in memory of Vester Vanstrom.  Alexander (Scotty) & Dorothy Meek donated in memory of Gordon (Bucky) McKeeman.  Jeanne M. Pupke & Regina M. Largent donated in memory of Rev. Dr. Peter S. Raible.  John Eric Gibbons donated in memory of Gordon McKeeman.  Jill McAllister donated in memory of Rev. Arthur Dean Wilmot.  Rev. Fran Dearman AIM donated in memory of Maurice Francis John Dearman.  Kelly Weisman Asprooth-Jackson & Sara Weisman donated in memory of Helena P. Chapin.  Emilie Boggis donated in memory of Jennifer Slade.  UURMaPA donated in memory of Christine E. Hillman.  Rev. Nancy Palmer Jones donated in memory of Rev. Marjorie Bowens-Wheatley.  Richard "Bud" Murphy donated in memory of Helen M. Murphy.  Mitra Rahnema donated in memory of Fredricka Leigh.

Page 51 UUMA Annual Review Year of 2015 Sustaining the Call Honorees  The Rev. Deborah Raible & Kevin Clark donated in memory of The Revs. Peter Raible & Ron Clark.  UURMaPA donated in memory of Rev. Orloff Miller.  Rev. Peg Boyle Morgan donated in memory of Rev. Peter Raible.  Clark Olsen donated in memory of Arthur W. Olsen & Catherine Olsen.  Arthur Berman donated in memory of Nathaniel Lauriat.  Dana Worsnop donated in memory of Robert and Nancy Worsnop.  Rev. Kent C. McKusick donated in memory of Alice and Carl McKusick.  Jessica Clay donated in memory of Dan Kane.  Cathy Harrington donated in memory of Nancy Shaffer.  Rev. Jon M. Luopa donated in memory of Rev. Dr. Wallace W. Robbins.  Diane Rollert donated in memory of Elmer Olenick.  Kent & Heidi Saleska donated in memory of Revs. Charles D. & Charlotte Justice Saleska.  UURMaPA donated in memory of Rev. Janet Bowring.  UURMaPA donated in memory of Rosemarie Carnarius.  Rev. Sarah C. Richards donated in memory of Rev. Dan Kane.  Gail Seavey donated in memory of Frederica Leigh.  Reverend David L. Helfer donated in memory of Valerie Lynn Chambers.  Thom Belote donated in memory of Tim Jensen.  Rev. Dr. Sydney A. Morris donated in memory of Polly Guild.  Mark Glovin donated in memory of Bill DeWolfe.  UURMaPA donated in memory of Terry M. Burke.  Rev. Dr. Terence H. Ellen donated in memory of Chris Raible.  Rev. Sarah Moldenhauer-Salazar donated in appreciation of Barbara and Bill Hamilton- Holway.  Rev. Terrance Robinson donated in memory of Andrew Temple & Sarah Timperley Robinson.  Rev. Terrance Robinson donated in memory of Rev. Dorsey Blake.

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 Rev. Barbara Davenport donated in appreciation of Leon Hopper.  Joyce Yokomizo donated in appreciation of Pamela Gerhke.  Rev. Scott W. Alexander donated in memory of Rev. Eugene Pickett.  Rev. Cathleen Cox donated in appreciation of Rev. Jody Shipley.  Rev. Brent & Pat Smith donated in memory of Peter Spilman Raible.  Rev. Dennis Hamilton donated in memory of Rev. Gordon McKeeman.  Rev. Nina Kalmoutis donated in memory of Rev. Dan Kane.  Rev. Kristen Rohm donated in appreciation of Rev. Bets Wienecke.  Those gathered for the ordination of Pamela Gehrke donated in memory of Rev. Dan Kane.  Rev. Jacqueline Luck donated in memory of her dear deceased colleagues.  Rev. Bets Wienecke donated in memory of Rev. Dr. Marjorie Newlin Leaming.  Rev. Linda Olson Peebles donated in appreciation of Janette Lallier.  Rev. Rebecca Edmiston-Lange donated in appreciation of Janette Lallier.  Rev. Clyde Grubbs donated in appreciation of Janette Lallier.  Rev. Sylvia Howe donated in appreciation of Janette Lallier.  An anonymous donor donated in appreciation of Janette Lallier.  Rev. Kate Landis donated in appreciation of Rev. Joan Montagnes.  Gretchen Chambers & William Ames donated in appreciation of Rev. Peter Luton.

Page 53 Thank You for A Wonderful Year!